Stella's Bath

This is the story of a very smelly rat who got into some pineapple that'd passed its prime. (That's the same pineapple that befouled my floor in my last entry, in fact, except now two days older.)

The giant pouched rat, see, is a miserly creature, fond of stockpiles and stashes and secret hoards. Like one's Aunt Margaret, who's still got powdered milk from the war, the giant rat saves compulsively. For every bite it eats, it hides three. Unlike Aunt Margaret, however, the rat does not discriminate between preserves and perishables. Thus, the conscientious pouched rat owner must break into its nest each night and remove anything more corruptible than a breadcrust. I, of course, perform this function religiously. I am not a fan of smelly things.

Today, I have learned another important lesson about the giant pouched rat: in addition to impressive thriftiness, it is also possessed of great cunning. Upon finding its nest constantly burgled, it will, given time, find somewhere else to stow its loot. And so it came to be that I woke up this morning to the sound of gleeful squealing, and the stench of decaying fruit. Stella, my darling Stella, was chirping with delight as she rolled and squirmed and wallowed in a great soggy pile of rotting pineapple. Just like a dog, she was--a filthy little dog who's found himself a ranky ol' fish supper to play with.

I fished her out with a minimum of biting, but it was, alas, too late. Her fur was matted into a thousand sticky clumps, and my hands came away slimed and bebristled. There was nothing for it: I had to give Stella a bath.

Now, bathing a rat is a tricky proposition under the best of conditions. Even a rat of ordinary size and gentle disposition becomes quite a handful when confronted with a tub of water and a shampoo bottle. It struggles and shrieks and kicks and scratches, and, the minute you turn your back, leaps out of the bathtub and shakes itself all over everything. If you are exceptionally unlucky, it may even tangle itself in your shower curtain, causing unsightly rips and tears in the plastic. You end up with a very sulky rat wrapped up in a towel, bugging its eyes out in righteous indignation. Every time you laugh at it (which you can't help but do, since its hair is sticking up everywhere, and it looks like a deformed kangaroo), it struggles and scratches your hands.

And then, there's the giant rat. Your average Rattus norvegicus, healthy and of full maturity, weighs between seven and sixteen ounces. Stella, who is big and fat even for a full-grown Cricetomys gambianus, weighs at least four pounds. She's well over a foot long, without counting in her tail. Everything about her is big, from her belly to her paws. (Not to mention her teeth and claws.) She is also not quite what you'd call gentle. Ferocious would be a better term, or maybe mordaciously inclined. Slippery just isn't a term you want to add to that particular equation.

Nonetheless, she was in need of a good scrubbing, and it fell to me to administer it. The first part was easy: fill bathtub, insert rat. I tried to ease her in, sort of thing, let her test the waters and slide in on her own, but she wasn't having a bit of it. When she started drinking the bathwater, I gave her a shove.

She didn't like that one bit. She let out a piercing SKEEEEEEEEK, and bounced straight back up in the air, legs stretched out like a cartoon rat that's just been electrocuted. Then, she scrambled out of the bath and launched herself onto the counter, touching absolutely everything in sight. Sticky smears of pineapple and rat hair adorned the mirror, the countertops, and, to my utter dismay, my toothbrush. (Faugh. Can't use that again.) I apprehended her trying to break into a virgin packet of tampons, and tossed her back in. She swam frantically to and fro, scrabbling up at every opportunity. I stood guard, shoving her back down again. After some time, she calmed down and stood in the middle of the tub, squeaking grouchily to herself.

"Well, I never," she mumbled. "The indignity of it all! I'm not forgetting this any time soon. You'll see. Oh, yes. You'll see all right. You just wait. Skeek."

Ignoring her grumblings, I palmed a dollop of shampoo. Unfortunately, I couldn't both hold Stella steady and lather her up at the same time. It's impossible to hang onto a rat that size with just one hand--not if you want to keep your hand, that is. It squirms and wriggles and bends, and before you know it, it's sinking its teeth into that webby bit between your thumb and forefinger. To make matters worse, it's also trying to climb up your arm to get out of the bathtub, and sinking its enormous claws into your flesh. In the meantime, the shampoo's splattered all over you, the wall, and the bathtub. It's everywhere, indeed, except on the rat.

After several abortive attempts to work up a lather one-handed, I rolled up my trouserlegs, got into the bathtub, and stuffed Stella between my knees, hoping to hold her still that way. It worked all right for her front half, but the minute I loosened my knees to get at her back end, she whipped around and launched herself up my leg. A short and bloody battle ensued, culminating in Stella getting a nice nick out of my left pointerfinger, and my dumping her in the toilet. (This was quite accidental--she was meant to go in the bathtub, but she bounded off to the right at the last second, and leapt straight in the bowl.) Cursing, I fished her out.

"Brilliant," I snarled. "Now, you've not only got pineapple goo--you've been in toilet water to boot. Lovely. Bloody lovely." Then, I slipped in all the soap, and the next thing I knew, I was sitting waist-deep in the manky ratwater. Stella was making a noise that sounded suspiciously like laughter. I spent the next half hour standing in the bathtub scrubbing frantically at Stella's arse end every time she swam by, and evading her attempts to run up my trouserlegs. There followed a brief and brutal episode of rinsing (me shoving Stella repeatedly under running water, that is), and a lot of towel-related argy-bargy, and then it was over.

All in all, it could've been worse. I sustained only one minor bite, and a small hole in my trousers, and Stella...well, she didn't enjoy it, precisely, but she wasn't any the worse for the experience. She certainly smelled better, and a nice Spanish omelette cooled off her snit-fit. After a good go-round with a bottle of Lysol, my poor, abused bathroom also recovered.