The Tail of Docky McSqueak

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I had just drifted off to sleep when I was startled awake by distant screaming. It took a moment to realize the screaming wasn’t fueled by my dream state. It was continuous and getting louder – the screams were real. 

 

I jumped up, wide awake now, and turned my attention to finding the source of the screaming. I rushed out my front door onto what was then referred to as Dock 2. The screams were emanating from my next-door neighbour's float home. Drenched in absolute panic, her screaming was all I could hear. So loud, it sounded like the screams were coming from outside on the docks, but also from inside her home at the same time.

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As I raced down the dock to my neighbour's, I noticed a few other women spilling out of their float homes onto the dock, making their way towards the scream engulfed float home. I burst through my neighbour's door calling her name, "Marie-Jo! Marie-Jo! We're coming!" She was upstairs and could only respond with more screaming.

 

I scrambled up the rickety spiral staircase (which has since been replaced) adrenaline pumping, ears filled with Marie-Jo's blood curdling screams. The first thing I was able to see was my neighbour atop the kitchen counter, the bottom part of her anyways; the top part was hanging out the kitchen window wailing in fear. It looked like she was trying to climb out the window and got stuck halfway. 

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With the other women at my heels, I reached the top of the staircase and finally saw the cause of her panic. In the middle of the room was a big, fat hairy brown rat. He sat motionless, like he was contemplating something. As I approached, he didn't make a move.

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The others went to console our neighbour while I grabbed a waste bin and a magazine. Like you would with a spider or fly, perhaps, I dropped the bin upside down on the unresponsive rat and slid the magazine underneath, picking up and flipping over the whole thing so I had the rat in a covered bin. I would later learn she had been making tea at her kitchen sink and when she turned around, there he was in the middle of the room.

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The screaming was replaced by whimpering as the consoling continued. I walked the rat out of the house, along the dock, up the ramp and through the parking lot. I cut up to the park and across to the farthest corner where I knew there was a garbage can with a lid. Briefly eulogizing the now dead rat, I unceremoniously dumped it in the garbage can. To be fair though, from what I know of rats, it seems like a good way to go, laying atop a trash heap (minus the poison, I would learn was the cause of his listlessness).

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By the time I got back to my neighbour’s place, the mood had grown calmer and there was even some laughter. My neighbour was no longer hanging out her window, but she was still sitting on the counter-top, feet dangling, not quite touching the floor. She was saying how she’d seen evidence of rodents recently so had put out the rat poison. Who knows why he came to the middle of the room to die? It was like the rat, in a final act of defiance and knowing his fate, wanted an audience, like some Shakespearean actor embellishing a dramatic death scene on stage.

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I should qualify this story and say that while there isn't rat problem here at the wharf, we do live very closely with nature. Every once in awhile we are reminded of that fact through the visitations of opportunistic critters - not unlike anywhere else in the world (except Alberta, which claims to be rat-free!). The incident does resonate uniquely with our community when you consider a few things: 1) rats supposedly abandon sinking ships so at least the float home’s floatation was not in doubt; 2) we are known to subject unwelcome stowaways to poison and plank-walking (so be warned!); and, perhaps most importantly, 3) if I am ever in trouble, all I have to do is scream out my window and my neighbours will come running.

 

What a great place to live!