The rat came out at practice last night. No, that isn’t some kind of derby drill. One of our practice spaces has an actual rat.
He’s been very quiet this season. I’ve only seen him once. The last time he came out, I saw him before anyone else.
We were standing in the center of the track listening to coach explain something when I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. I turned and saw a rather large rodent scurrying across the top of the bleachers. I gasped and made a panic-stricken face. Kiddo saw me and asked if I was okay. As I was whispering that I saw the rat, Mykill saw it, too. Mykill isn’t very fond of rats. She screamed.
Our coach wrote the rat off because “he lives here”. Mykill and I didn’t care where the rat lived. This was our practice space and neither of us wanted The Plague. Mykill was very vocal about this, but no one seemed to care.
Last night, Mr. Rat came out again.
Oddly enough, we were all in the center of the track again with coach talking to us about something. Mid sentence he says “the rats back” and then continues with what he was saying. It was so nonchalant that it took me a few seconds to realize he meant The Rat. By the time I looked over to the bleachers, it had already scampered off. No one screamed this time. Well, my derby wife screamed a little later when she thought a roach had crawled onto her, but it turned out to be a cricket.
I’m thinking about catching the rat and making him our mascot. Rats would look so cute with devil horns.
Since you probably weren’t there for the rat, I’ll leave you with this other rat story from Patton Oswalt who is much funnier than I am.
