Words + Images

Isabel is my landlady.  In her garden there are flowers and vegetables and herbs of all sorts and whimsical little touches for her daughter like little white birds.  And there is Oswald.  Oswald is a rat.  When I’ve stood in the garden, I’ve seen him dash by behind me.  And when I sit upstairs in the kitchen window, I see him nibbling on plump leaves below.  He’s a city rat, big, brown and long-tailed and whiskered.  His coat is streaked with gray.  Perhaps he’s old and has lived in the garden a long time.  It is a very nice garden.

I’ll be honest.  I do not have a fondness for rats.  But I do love nature.  Oswald is a part of the garden’s ecosystem.  So, when I see him and my heart hammers and I just want him GONE, I try to think of rats I’ve liked in literature, like those in Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.  Then there’s that pot bellied rat in Charlotte’s Web.  I’m sure there are others.  In any case … I’m hoping we can find a way to live together.