Råtta from Heaven

I saw a rat fall out of a tree, today. You don't get many rats in this neighbourhood (they mostly prefer the east side, where they can cozy up with the rubbish round the overflowing Dumpsters), so it was a special treat just to come across one. Having him fall from heaven, as it were, that made it downright astonishing. A good omen, perhaps. Rats are a sign of wealth and fortune. (Haven't had much of either, just lately--it's about time the tides were turning!) Furthermore, I was out on a rat-related mission when it happened, stocking up on honey drops, so it was double-rat, double-lucky.

At any rate, there I was, inspecting the trees on Burrard Street. I'm not overly interested in trees, as a general rule, but the pavement'd been all duggen up round these ones, and I was puzzled. I couldn't decide whether they were new trees, just planted, or old ones that'd been repaved around. Given the amount of time I devote to gazing out that window, you'd think I'd know, but I'm horrible with that sort of thing. I know there are trees on Burrard, that there have been trees on Burrard, but not how many, or what kind. One of them, off to the right of my window, looks like Cthulhu. The others are much of a muchness. Maybe they planted some more; maybe they were there all along. Probably, they were there all along. It would be difficult to plant such enormous trees. You'd have to dig twenty feet deep, to fit all the roots, and twenty feet wide, to boot. And then, you'd need all manner of cranes and pulleys and levers, to finagle the tree into the hole. And then the roots might not grab on properly, and the tree would come crashing down on somebody's car. What a disaster!

No. The trees must've been there all along. Maybe they'd bunched up the concrete as they grew. Maybe cracks had come where their trunks pushed outwards, and people had started to trip. Maybe they'd--

--plop!

And, just like that, there he was, this great bamboozled rat, looking around like he hadn't a clue where he was (which, I imagine, he hadn't).

"Ey," I said.

He looked at me, twiddling his ears.

"Ey. Where'd you come from, then?"

A man in a silly pink shirt gave me a strange look. I slanted one right back. (It was an exceptionally foolish shirt. I think I had one like it in the eighties, all skin-tight and fluorescent. So twentieth century! Anyone wearing a shirt like that forfeits the right to strange-look his fellow pedestrians, even if they are talking to rats.)

The rat twiddled his ears some more. I ferreted round in my bag for a honey drop to throw him, but a cloud of old biddies descended right then, scaring him into a storm-drain. He had to squeeze really hard to fit through. I hope he was OK. A rat could drown, down there in the sewer. An alligator could eat him, even. Anything could happen.

I was disappointed at losing my clumsy tree-rat so soon, but pleased to have seen him at all. It's not often one sees a rat up a tree. Something so improbable must, indeed, be a sign of great things to come. (Either that, or a sign of the apocalypse. Or a sign that the trees were freshly planted. The rat could've come with the trees. He could've been tucked into the branches for a nap, when the tree was lying on its side in some truck-bed. Poor wee sod. If that was how it happened, he'd probably been trying to find his way down for ages.)

There's also a possibility--a rather remote one, admittedly, but a possibility, nonetheless--that he scrambled up there on a heroic packbawky-hunt, but ended up being knocked down by his quarry. Rats like to suck eggs. Maybe he thought he smelled a nest. Who knows?

Inspired by the råtta from heaven, I went home and finished that comic-script I've been working on, and penciled in some of the illustrations, for good measure. All in all, it's been a wonderful day. Quite brilliant, really. I can smell autumn creeping into the air already, but the summer's been fun. Frits came, Gail was here, and a rat fell out of the sky. I won't forget these things.