That could have gone much better than it did.

So, there’s something that’s been bugging me a lot lately, and that is that I can’t afford to own my own car. Even if someone gave me one for free, with what I make and the bills I pay, I could not actually pay for the insurance and the gas, unless by some miracle, I won the lottery (which I don’t play, so, I suppose… if someone randomly gave me a bunch of money.)

So, this results in having to do two things I really hate doing: taking transit and being late for everything all the time because transit really sucks. (I was on the 129 today and now I know why it’s so late all the time. The route goes across some train tracks where trains like to stop and hang out in THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING ROAD FOR NO REASON, so the bus got stuck waiting for the fucking train to move for 15 minutes. I fell asleep three times, only waking up because I had a rat in my bag and it was moving around.) Also, buses are inconsistent and smell like nicotine, the Skytrain is usually consistent but half the escalators are out for maintenance and it’s full of people I don’t know. Also, I get horribly motion sick on both of them.

The other thing I end up having to do is beg people for rides, in situations where taking transit is not a very comfortable option, or when transit is simply not an option at all. This means constantly feeling like I’m a burden on people, which leads to a general feeling of being useless and kind of incompetent. Everyone has cars these days. Le sigh. Having a car would have made today a lot easier. A LOT easier.

In particular, I was supposed to feed my Francipants on Saturday, but I forgot to get him a rat! Slipped my mind entirely. Poor Francis. I vowed to get a rat today and then have him decently fed and back in bed at a reasonable hour. So, I put the rat on top of Francis’ tank so he would smell the rat and come out of his house, hungry. And I waited. And… waited. Then I thought that maybe Francis couldn’t smell him through the cardboard (even though I could, because rats smell like small, furry shit factories) and put him in the plastic critter keeper instead. This was a bad idea, because now I could see him. For the first time ever, I thought the rat was actually… cute. Which made the prospect of killing the poor bastard even worse, because now I kind of liked the little rodent. I fed him some rice cake, and he didn’t seem to like it either. (If rats won’t eat it, it’s not really food, is it?)

Awwww.

So, I named him Wash, because, likeable though he may be, he would still have to die – as soon as Francis woke up, which he usually does around 8:30. But not today…

By 10 o’clock, I had had enough. Even if Francis didn’t want to eat, I was not going to sleep in the same house with a live rat. I would be too worried he’d get out and my landlords would find him and question why I had a rat, and then find out I have a snake. I’m not sure which would be worse. So I said goodbye to Wash and stuck him in Mauschwitz, and cranked it to full! Except it helps if you have gas for your gas chamber, because if you don’t, you spend the next hour texting someone and trying to figure out the next best way to kill a rat. I was just deciding between putting him in the freezer and drowning him in the sink when I remembered that… I have a snake.

Well now! What a novel idea! Let the snake kill the rat himself! Well, mostly. I got impatient (and tired) and woke his ass up, and brought him out to where the rat was waiting patiently to be gassed. He woke up to smell of rat the way Mr. Grumpiface does with bacon – I shit you not, he walks around the kitchen flicking his tongue at things and sniffing the air. It’s creepy as fuck.
I got to use my new forceps that I got at the PNE, and an old pair of suede gloves in case Francis got confused as to which moving thing was the rat. Francis struck the rat and coiled around him, just like he’s supposed to (look at my pretty boy!) and I immediately grabbed the rat’s back feet to keep him from damaging Francis. So, I got to hold the rat’s little paws while he died… and now I feel like a terrible person. But Francis has a full belly and is cruising around his tank, squishing down his dinner.

“One must die so the other may live…”

Seriously… what’s worse? Naming the rat before I kill it, or the fact that I kill rats for my snake?