A Rodent's Tale

Everybody at my bus stop knows of the rat who wants to be a squirrel. Every morning, around 7.15 am to 7.20 am, a rat would scurry out of the storm drain that runs behind the bus stop, and rush to this particular yellow flame tree, and try to climb it.

I've seen this happen on several accounts (for sometimes I go to the bus stop later, or the bus arrives earlier, so I don't witness this everyday, but I imagine it to happen everyday). The highest that I've seen him gone, is about...1.5 metres? Which is quite a feat, don't you think? For a rat.

Nobody knows what's the motivation, exactly, or maybe everybody else knows it, but since I don't talk to anybody, they don't tell me.

But anyway, I'd like to think that the rat wants to be a squirrel, because it is in love with the handsome squirrel who springs from tree to tree, branch to branch, with a handsome bushy tail, which, no doubt, should make the "swinging bachelor" very desirable, as compared to the other rats, and their worm-like tails.

On second thought, should love, or even lust, inspire such tedious dedication? Perhaps. But surely, such a tale would constitute a tedious repetition, and my imagination should be able to complicate matters in a more interesting way.

Perhaps, the rat was once a squirrel, and when it was little, there was a squirrel civil war, of sorts, and the occupants raped his mother, and threw him out of the nest, and down the tree. He was gripped by his need for vengeance, ever since.

Exiled, the rats took him in, out of pity or something else, it cannot be certain. Perhaps, he bribed them with his luscious tail (highly plausible since that would explain why he looks like a rat now).

Being skilled merely as land soldiers, even warriors, the rats were suitable to help fight the aerial combats of the squirrels. In this way, the rats proved to be weak allies, despite their viciousness and unscrupulous nature. They could hardly even offer emotional support without exchanging it for sexual favours.

As his popularity as a male prostitute grew in the rat community, so did his romanticised tale of vengeance, until it reached the ears of a ninja rat (whose true story may have inspired the popular character, "splinter"). Or, on hindsight, perhaps the ninja rat's ears reached him. So, more probably, it should have been a samurai rat (I heard samurais are into this).

Being a cheapskate, or in a rush, or a bad boyfriend, the samurai rat told him that, in order for one to fight his battle in the sky, he must first learn to fly. These words of wisdom, or obviousness, besides falling into the annoying stereotype of how ninja or samurai or kung fu masters talk, had our hero infused with a sense of purpose - he must first learn to climb trees again.

Climbing trees must be difficult, for a squirrel who grew up with, and who was pretty screwed up by, rats. Well.

Climbing trees must be difficult, for a squirrel who was never properly instructed, and who had no bushy tail to help. That is why, he practises it every morning. He probably practises more often than that, but I just wasn't there to see.

I don't know if I am rooting for his success, really. Although, it is very moving to see his determination every morning, on my way to work, I cannot decide if I believe that vengeance, in general, is an overrated or childish... excuse for not accepting defeat. This is in the same vein as how I cannot quite decide if our hero is a male or female.

(Sneak)