Tara and I were walking to the corner-store to get things we didn't need with $12 in change that we collaboratively accumulated by scraping from the bottoms of four different hand bags, a backpack that smelled like melted crayons in a septic tank, and a random junk drawer in the kitchen that contained items which reveal details about me that are much too compromising to list here. (If you're wondering how that's one sentence, it's because it probably shouldn't be.)
Mid-reach our destination, a rat suffering from poison, was panting tortuously and convulsing with agony. Me, a cowboy by upbringing and Tara, a cowboy at heart, knew we had to put the creature out of his suffering.
We decided it was best to carry on with our primary mission to our destination where we would get $5 wine (as purposeful purchase), a box of Mary's Gone Crackers (because anyone who eats hummus on a daily basis knows that you either have hummus or crackers, but rarely both), and shitty chocolate (as our impulse purchase).
After passing the rat on our way home to drop off the things we got but didn't need, we began brainstorming on how to humanely kill the rat. As the true cowboy, I suggested we do what my grandpa would do to half dead rabbits when my Doberman would catch them and drag them into the yard: "Let's just find a heavy shovel and chop its head off."
We decided that this was a bad idea considering the fact that Tara and I are skinny little bitches with no weight to ensure a swift, painless death for the rat.
But mostly, we couldn't find a shovel.
Then I suggested: "Let's just beat it over the head with a huge ass rock!"
Tara was hesitant. So, I started typing things into Google that I never thought I would before:
"Humanitarian way to kill a rat" and "How to kill a rat quickly" and, probably as a result of binge watching House, "How quickly will a rat die from severe head contusions?"
Results for these searches were mostly advertisements for various brands of rat poison with a few other results I was not curious enough to click on.
It was then we realized the combination of the obscurity of my search questions and the overwhelming horror of my spelling would make it virtually impossible to find a quick way to kill a rat. Especially, since the process of finding a quick way to kill the rat became tedious itself.
Thus, we reclined.
Then, Tara provided a scientific solution:
"We could make chlorine gas to kill the rat!"
Me:"Totally! We can just drown him in windex and bleach!"
Tara, never quick to judge, looked at me with a face that was combinatory in its reaction to my statement: her body language leaned at me intrigued, her eyes glistened, hopeful, her mouth curled downward, appalled by my excitement at drowning a rat with extremely toxic chemicals, and her hands swung at her sides with disparity.
This provoked my next two inquiries to google:
"How to safely make chlorine gas" and "Will chlorine gas kill a rodent quickly?"
At this point the scene was as follows:
Bottle of wine, empty.
Shitty chocolate, cramping our stomachs.
Crackers, but no more hummus.
We assumed the rat to be in a similar state:
Poisoned; dead.
The next morning on my way to pick up eggs at the supermarket, I came home and confirmed.
8.21.14
Denver, CO
