The Monkey King's Used Primate Emporium and Book Reviews

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Andy Hartnell, �Army of Darkness: Ashes to Ashes�

Started August 28 � Finished August 28, 2006; 112 pages. Posted 31 October 2006

This entry, whether you like it or not, is the fault of one Samanthaphi, a woman from Georgia (where the devil went down to � and from all looks about the place, decided to stay and open a Popeye�s Chicken franchise) who should write much more than she does.

In any case, after what seemed like months between entries, she recently posted a weekday-long entryfest specifically concentrated on members of the rodent family in honor of her child�s pet gerbil that expired.

Now, as far as I remember, I didn�t have a gerbil, though I did have a comparable rodent of similar nonexistent brain capacity as a child. It was then that I learned that a lot of living creatures, even when soft and pretty, don�t have a lot else to offer.

And before I get in trouble. Kelly is excluded from this generalization. As a matter of fact, so are most of the girls I dated. Not all though � I�ll be the first to say I dated a few girls who were devastatingly beautiful, and yet sharp as a wet sponge.

But back to Samantha. Her weeklong rodent rant got me thinking about the vermin in my life, meant in the best possible way. I don�t remember a lot about my pets in my early formative years. I do remember my sister and I having a coop with filled with pet ducks when we were children. Ducks aren�t particularly interesting pets, except for the bragging rights that you have ducks as pets. But one morning we awoke to discover dogs had forced their way into our pen and slaughtered every single bird.

My sister, then approximately 8 years old, and myself with a mere six years on the planet, cried like televangelists repenting sins. Our parents excused us from the bloodiest parts of the clean up and sent us off to do other things to occupy our time.

Later that night sitting around the dinner table, my mother began dishing out portions of food. Back then we didn�t have a nutritional pyramid, instead following government instructions on the nutritional value of the Food Square. Vegetables, bread and milk were doled out in equal proportions. The only thing missing was meat. She dished that out last, handing me a plate.

I looked at my serving. �What is this?� I asked.

�Liver,� she responded. �You like liver.�

�The hell you say,� I said. (OK, I probably said something like �do not� but it�s three in the morning � I get a little artistic license.)

My comment was ignored, and she continued serving.

Writing this down now, I realize that there isn�t any way I can provide actual quotes from the period as it was somewhere along the lines of 30 years back and I can�t remember specifics about last week. But I do remember the crux of what was said, so I�ll provide both my remembrance of what was said, along with what was more likely spoken between myself and my family members.

�Say,� I said, �I remember us being woefully short of food earlier today, and you�ve spent your time watching over us and our recent pet-related tragedy. Where did you happen to find time to go to the store and purchase liver?�

Translation: �Who do you think you�re fooling, lady?�

What was probably said: �Is this from my ducks?!?�

Our mother explained that it would be wasteful to throw all that perfectly good meat away (or bury it, maybe?). I suppose I should be thankful that the dogs didn�t get my sister like that opening scene from Suburbia.

And speaking of Suburbia, that movie was the inspiration for me getting a rat as a pet, because Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers Kept one on his shoulder at all times except for the scene where he shoves it in his mouth.

I�ve had probably a half-dozen rats over the years, and I�ve taught them some cool tricks. That probably had something to do with my habit of bringing books with me when I went to buy a new one. I�d get a flat surface, put something like say, Steinbeck or Vonnegut or Chomky on one side, and something like Rush Limbaugh or Howard Stern or a romance novel on the other. The rat that scrambled to the latter side was put back in the pen.

Once you found one with the good sense and taste, teaching them tricks was easy. One rat liked to run laps over my arms. You could make a chain of people linking arms and he would run over all their shoulders, always stopping when he returned to mine. Another one learned to leap from platforms or other people to my hand as soon as I held it out. I think he made four feet, but just barely.

The winner though, was this �mickey-mouse� (named because of its small size) that would crawl down my arm into a Mickey�s big mouth bottle, take a few drinks, then crawl back out.

Yeah, that one was a hit with the ladies.

This one was smart and really liked me. I pretty much did away with the cage except for him to use as a bathroom. That�s how smart he was. Toilet training a rat is pretty much impossible, and yet he was. He went everywhere with me, though since I was probably about 15 or 16, everywhere really just meant going to the mall to hang out. But that�s where he did his most amazing trick. I was walking along, him on my shoulder, when he suddenly scrambled into the top front pocket of my Army jacket, quick as lightning. I was about to ask him what his problem was when I looked up and saw the security guard walking toward us. I assume he just got used to me stuffing him in my pocket when I saw the security, but for him to figure that on his own was astounding.

Yeah, he was pretty cool, and people were jealous. So jealous, in fact, that one of my friends decided he needed one. I was trying to talk him out of it. He didn�t have a cage at home, he didn�t have the money to buy one, and we were going to be out all day and had plans that evening. I explained that you have to take the time to build a bond; you can�t just plop one on your shoulder and expect it to stay there.

Some cute girls walked up and of course, they wanted to hold my rat. While they cooed and petted it, asking me questions and whatnot, my buddy sulked away. Ten minutes later he sat down and opened a box, which held a little mouse similar to mine. He took it out of the box and held it out to me.

It promptly made a frantic leap for freedom, sending us scrambling after him in the middle of a shopping mall.

He finally caught it, cupping it between his hands. The box that held it was destroyed in the scramble. Plus, having a brief taste of freedom, the rat apparently decided he liked it and wanted to try again. He started digging and biting at the hands holding him. My friend did an uncomfortable little dance that looked like he needed to go to the bathroom.

�Dude, put it in your pocket,� he said, holding out his cupped hands to me.

�I�m not putting it in my pocket!� I said. �I already have my rat with me and he gets the pocket.�

He pointed to the side pocket on my leather jacket. �Put him in that pocket,� he said, eyes pleading.

�The side pockets are too small. I mean, yeah, he�ll fit, but it�s going to suck for him. Why don�t you hold him?�

�Hold him in what?� he said, using his chin to motion that all he was wearing were shorts and a T-shirt. �Come on, he�s fucking biting me!�

�Fucking serves you right,� I said. But I opened the pocket for him, whereupon he shoved his hands in and let go. I zipped the pocket up, just barely in time before it had a chance to escape.

We checked on him every now and again. At first he was furiously scurrying around the small space, but he eventually wore himself out and went to sleep. We peeked inside periodically, but if you woke him, he made another leap for freedom and almost made it a few times. We learned it was best to leave him alone.

An hour or two passed, and my buddy asked to see his new purchase again. I unzipped the pocket, but nothing tired to force its way out. I opened the pocket wider. Still nothing. Finally, sticking my hand in, I found the pocket empty, and found a new small hole in the lining. The hole was too small to investigate (dirty!), so instead we laid the jacket against a flat surface and very carefully patted down the entire area, looking for the escaped rodent.

We never found it. I looked for other holes in the leather, but couldn�t locate any. �It�s a complicated jacket,� I told him. �Once you get into the lining, there�s a lot of ways to escape. I can�t figure out how he did it, but he�s gone. I told you not to get one yet.�

He saw the logic and quietly seethed at my rat, calmly seated on my shoulder. He never did buy another, figuring I had some rat whisperer talent.

Fast forward about two or three years.

We finally figured out that hanging out at a mall was lame and decided our time would be better spent by forming a band. I learned the hard way that rats, what with their tiny little ears, aren�t particularly suited to be in the same room with a full drum kit and a bunch of amplifiers. The end result was the end of our first song being accompanied by a tiny little rat scream of pain.

Spending most of our time trying to figure out how to play our instruments (and failing), my rat spent a lot of time in his cage in the next room. He died about six months after the band started. Truth be told, though I was bummed, it freed me up from the responsibility of taking care of it, and I didn�t have to feel bad about him getting the short end of my attention any longer. I didn�t bother to get another rat for a long time.

During a break between playing, we all gathered around the backyard, trying to think of offensive song titles that we could use. I found myself absentmindedly playing with the small hole in my jacket pocket. I wore that jacket nearly every day and it was deteriorating rapidly, so I wasn�t surprised when the pocket lining came out completely between my fingers. I started exploring the interior of the jacket.

You can see where this is going, can�t you?

Every six inches or so that I reached in brought forth new treasures. Pocket change that escaped the pocket. Punk rock stickers. A pen. A bottle opener. A note from my mother with a list of egregious behavior saying I�d better fix these traits or else I�d need to find a new place to live. My note attached to the same note saying �If you can�t think of anything nice to say, don�t say anything at all.�

It was the pocket change I was most interested in, as we were flat broke and I had found nearly enough change to buy a pack of cigarettes. My entire arm was in my jacket, siding all the way around the back of the lining. I was nearly at the other end of the jacket when I felt another quarter. This one was wedged in the very bottom corner of the jacket, and it took some effort to get it between my fingers, but I finally got it. Success! And now, we buy cigarettes!

But something didn�t feel right. Yeah, it was the same size as a quarter. Sure, it was the same width. Even the circumference was the same. But the weight was off. I flipped the quarter over and slapped it on the top of my palm. That�s when I saw the claw.

And the snout.

Whiskers too.

�Hey Saul?� I said.

�Yeah?� said Saul, looking up.

�I found your rat.� I chucked it into his lap. He screamed in a higher pitch than my rat did when we played in the same room.

Like I said, he never did buy another rat.

Now I�m in Hawaii. After about seven months in my new house after moving out of the lesbian hovel, I discovered a rodent had found my stock of packaged goods, laying waste to Rice-a-Roni and Top Ramen packages. I removed all the penetrable food leaving only the canned goods, which the rodent also tried to get at, chewing away labels of soup cans and one tin of Spam sent to me by Mrs. Happy. But it gave up after that, and the next four months were spent without sign of small intruders.

Last week I got home after a long night at the club. I got in my room and went through the ritual of removing wallet, lighter, cigarettes, pocket change, etc. While putting things away, there was a quick dark flash across the floor, knocking hard into a box received in the mail that I had set down. The gray lump bounced off the box and darted into the closet.

I didn�t jump on the chair and shriek, but I did jump. Then I saw what it was after, noticing the industrial-sized container of peanut butter on the floor with the cap chewed half away.

By the way I�ve had numerous innuendoes presented by people who see the big jar of peanut butter in my room. I play video games, people! Dipping a celery stick into a jar of peanut butter seems a lot healthier than subsisting on nothing but potato chips. But then again, with minds like you have, what would you know about healthy?

Anyhoo, as much as I like rats, I�m not going to romanticize one marauding through my room as some sort of relation to Templeton who really just needs love and junk food. I knew I needed to do something. I pushed aside the things in my closet to see where the rodent ran off to, finally seeing the hole in the corner of the closet floorboards. I removed the boxes of comics, lest some vermin feast upon my first issue of Daredevil, then cleared out all the hanging clothes, namely the funeral suit, my Halloween costumes, a few collared shirts and finally, my holdover outerwear, meaning things I own that I�d never need to wear in Hawaii. Those items consisted of my trench coat and my leather jacket.

Let me screw with the timeline a bit here to say that before I went home, I went to my favorite dive bar, hoping to get some good quotes on the upcoming smoking ban for the paper. The owner of the bar told me his perspective, but he was also working which meant he often had to stop in mid-sentence to help other patrons. During one of these pauses, I looked at the television screen showing a special from National Geographic concerning rats.

No, I�m not making this up.

The segment I caught dealt with this region in the Middle East where wild rats where such a daily part of general existence that they were ignored, and in some cases, revered. The screen showed one man dumping out food for the hundreds of rats swarming the sidewalk to feed upon, his own child no more than a foot away from the feeding dish. The elder explained that their culture was big on reincarnation, and so it was possible that any of these rats could be his father, or great grandfather, or second cousin, etc., etc.

But that�s a tangent. I have to admit, I didn�t notice anything wrong that night, aside from the obvious sign of rodent intrusion. The next day however, with the sun streaming through the windows, I passed by my pile of clothes. The leather jacket was on top.

And the collar had been eaten away.

Yes, when I first got here, I listed the leather jacket as one of the things I didn�t need to bring with me. But it is a $200 leather jacket. It was a gift, paid for by combined effort by my sister and my mother. How many mothers do you know that would buy their son a leather biker jacket, when they didn�t like the whole punk rock lifestyle in the first place? And now it was ruined.

My first thought was, �Of course you realize, this means war.�

My second thought was, �Of course you realize that whenever anybody said that line, it was usually a cartoon featuring a human against some sort of vermin, and the vermin usually came out better in the end.�

The third thought was that the rats only ate away at the collar. The one area in constant contact with both myself and the leather fabric. The area where you would collect the most sweat. The rat (or rats) decided they liked this area, which in other words meant they thought I tasted good and was a source of nourishment.

I grabbed a flashlight and shone it down the hole in the floorboards, realizing that I didn�t know what kind of Army of Darkness lay underneath this three-story house. But I prepared a plan...

(To be continued...)


Rating: Worth used.

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