THE RAT WITH THE GIANT BRAIN

SHIVA THE RAT: DESTROYER OF MY WORLD
By Gerrard

I got a call today telling me that I had to come down here and write a 1,000 word story for Humor News Nuts publications. I guess I was the only one home because everyone else is out on the lakes having fun. So here I am. I have never been allowed to write anything before. I hope I don’t get in trouble.

I’m not sure if my story qualifies as a space alien type adventure. It was really weird and that says a lot coming from a guy who raises rats for a living. I guess I have to start telling the story now. I hope I just added enough fill words to put my blog over 1,000 words when I’m done.

To begin with, I live in my mom’s basement and raise rats for a living. . It is a big basement and I have several thousand rats in it. I raise the rats to sell to business and colleges. If you wear makeup, there is a good chance one of my rats had it on before you did. And, if you ever had open heart surgery chances are the surgeon that performed it learned how to do so on one of my rats. I raised all my rats from babies and I am happy about what my children have achieved. I hope that one day one of my rats will go into outer space. I’ll be a proud papa then, that’s for sure. It’s too bad girls don’t see my profession to be as exciting as I do.

I’m afraid I have digressed from the story. What happened to me involved rats? The one rat was a really smart little buddy of mine named Ernie. He was my best friend when I was in high school. You see my family has always been in the rat business and I just took it over when my dad died. Ernie could count up to six and even write the first two letters of his name “ER”.

I was never going to sell Ernie. For one think he was a fluke. You see I have both white rats and black rats. It seems different institutions want different colored rats. I guess the humans are prejudiced about color but, rats are not. One day one of my really smart black rats picked the lock on his cage and sneaked into the cage of a little white beauty. The result was the grey rat named Ernie. Ernie got his daddy’s brains and was my favorite rat from the time he was born looking so different from all the rest.

A few weeks after he was born, Ernie was already an adult rat and was looking for love in all the wrong places. I caught him sneaking out the basement on several occasions. He was going out to hang out with those wild rats that hunt the dumpsters at night and chew into grocery stores to nibble on packages of cheese. I felt certain my friend would come to a really bad end. Most of the stores out there have traps set for rats. Of course there are also rat thugs who will eat off an ear if you look cross eyed at them. I tried to talk some sense into Ernie but, our long talks did not help at all.

One day I came down stairs and there was a large brown rat busily working on my computer. I was shocked. Ernie had brought a street rat into our home. I also wondered how a rat would know how to type on a keyboard let alone be so proficient. I did know the rat did not know what it was doing since the monitor was nothing but a bunch of numbers and math symbols with letters cubed and squared all over the place. Ernie was just sitting there beside the big brown rat looking at the monitor as the brown rat was typing away. Then, the big brown rat stopped typing, turned its’ head around and said, “I am Shiva, the destroyer of your world. I am Ernie is my boyfriend. You got a problem with that rat boy?” The big rat barred its teeth at me.”

“I don’t have any problem,” I said. I then walked to my bed that was in the far corner of the basement and lay down and pretended to go to sleep. All the while I kept one eye open watching Ernie’s new girlfriend type away on my computer. I was hoping she was not ordering stuff on line. Mom will be really mad if she has to pay for a bunch of stuff.

A few days later a short, bald, middle aged man in a suit came knocking at the front door. I opened it. The man held out a badge and said that he was detective Mike Ivan Black of the Traverse City police department and he was interested in talking to a man named Ernie who went by the nickname ER. “I’ll let you talk to him but, you won’t like it,” I said. “

I took the detective downstairs and introduced him to Ernie. Ernie just sat there and made little squeaky noises. The policeman was really mad. “Do you realize that you can go to jail for obstruction of justice rat boy?” the detective yelled.

“Sorry,” I apologized.

The detective then told me that there had been a series of graffiti pictures drawn all over the down town area and each was signed by Ernie or ER. The policeman said he knew to come to my address because the culprits also left their address under each signature. Before the policeman left he promised that he would be back with a warrant. Two days past and he never came back.

I went down to the basement one day and Shiva was busily working on my computer. ER was looking befuddled at the stuff Shiva was typing after all; he could only count to six. I figured he must have really been in love with that girl since usually he lost interest in numbers once he counted up to six. Big numbers made him wander off to sniff rat droppings or scratch him. But now, poor Ernie did not want to leave the side of Shiva the super rat.

“Oh by the way,” Shiva said to me “I took care of that detective. He won’t be coming around here anymore. And, how did you like that liver dinner Left out for you last night?”

I shuddered “I thought mom made that dinner for me and left it out,” I was in tears

“No I cooked the liver just for you Gerard. I also fixed that homemade bratwurst on a bun you had for lunch today. It’s made from an old family recipe.”

I was extremely ill then, down the steps came detective Black carrying a large suitcase. I was relieved and very frightened at the same time. I was relieved that he was alive but, I was frightened as to what the detective might be going to do to me for harboring an evil rat like Shiva.

The detective walked over to the computer station and opened his case. “You need to keep your mouth shut rat boy,” the detective said to me. Shiva and I are special undercover agents for the Rat Bureau of Investigations. We are trying to infiltrate an army of super intelligent rats who are plotting to take over the world and replace mankind as the dominant species your friend Ernie is our newest recruit.” That was all the agent said.

Meanwhile, Shiva hit a button on my computer and permanently fried my entire system. Shiva then jumped into the case and said “come on sugar pants” to Ernie. My friend jumped into the case and the policeman shut up the case and walked up the stairs and out the door. I never saw Ernie again.

I did receive an X-mass card a few years ago that I think came from Ernie. All that was written inside were the initials ER and the numbers 1, 2, 3,4,5,6.