An open letter to the rats in my room

Dear rats,

Our relationship has been rocky ever since I first discovered you in my room.  I know I didn't make you feel welcome when I first heard, and then saw, you rooting around in my trash.  You must not have taken favorably to me moaning, "no, no, NO," as I pulled the covers over my head, and pretended you weren't there.  Then I started hiding my food away from you, which I can understand hurt your feelings, since it is not something a good host does, but that's the thing - I don't want you here.  I've known rats (actually just one we named Annie) in the past; a sweet, clean, and clever domesticated rat who would crawl into my overcoat pocket and fall asleep.  You are nothing like Annie, you're her backwater cousins she tries to forget she has.  You are loud and rude and filthy and harbors of awful diseases.  You root through my trashing hoping against hope you will find something to eat, and when you don't you start gnawing away at anything you can find.  First you went for my crayons and I was like, ok, fine if you want to eat colored wax, yeah go knock yourself out, then you started on my books.  Then my clothes. Then my bag of warm-fuzzies, were I keep all the letters and notes my friends and family have sent me.  Then, most disturbingly, you left your stillborns on my floor to clean up.  If you wanted to start something, you sure as hell are going about it the right way.  This is war.  Prepare for battle.




Note:  I wrote this a while back, before I moved, but I never posted it, for fear that my mom would be on the next flight down to try to convince me to come back.  Now that I am in my new place, which doesn't have any rats, I feel like it is safe to post.  Oh, and there was war between the rats and me, and like all war, it was horrific and traumatizing even for the victorious.  I found three separate nests and had to do things that I'm pretty sure are against the Geneva Convention.  I don't want to talk about it.