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| From a DtB post of nine years ago |
Naturally, one of the asynaptic cretinoids who persist in monitoring our blog, and who seek to torment us with the occasional illiterate and idiotic "quip," weighed in with the unpleasant suggestion that our ratty fate was our own fault, the result of our leaving out food. But, in fact, the Reb and I are vegetarians and are pretty fussy about food. Further, owing to our aversion to ratitude (and maggotude and mousitude and various other itudes) we are routinely careful not to leave out food. Hence, we long ago acquired a little refrigerator for perishables and a hermetically sealed container for everything else.
So there.
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| Wall repair made Thursday morning Scene of the rat slime |
* * *
Today, I found that our little adventure was a topic of conversation throughout the halls of our benighted little college. One or two instructors informed me that they had discussed "the maggoty rat" with their students, who were much amused. Others with whom I spoke had run into administrators who seemed curiously up to speed on the whole business.“Really? They knew about our rat?”
Yep.
Today, as I returned from my 9:30 class, I found two colleagues climbing around the dirt and plants just outside my office window. Their eyes were trained on the outside correlative to the inside corner of my office, where I found the aforementioned rat-'n'-maggots blob Monday morning. “Yes,” announced one colleague, “this office is easily accessible to rats right there.” He pointed downward.
I, of course, was staring at these colleagues from the inside. I glanced down at the portion of the office wall in question: yes, there was something like a hole there. Big enough, it seemed, for rat entry.
Later, my dean came by. She, too, had heard about the rat episode from various colleagues. She had not, however, read my DtB account.
“You should read it,” I said. “In my post, I made a point of singing the praises of the maintenance crew who helped us out and saved us from stinkitude and ratitude.”
She nodded. “That's good.”
Throughout the day (I stayed until nearly 5:00 p.m.), various colleagues came by to inspect the now-legendary maggot zone, which, in truth, betrays no indication of its recent repulsive state. One colleague said, “Yeah, I popped in yesterday morning, and I saw at least 300 maggots wriggling on the floor there where you grabbed that dead rat.”
I thanked her for the detail. I hadn't noticed all those maggots on the floor. They were sucked up by the maintenance crew before I had returned to the scene after having grabbed and disposed of the odious rat bundle.
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| A year or so ago, lots of "cricket shit" was found in some A200 walls. |
* * *
Two or three years ago, during a rain storm, a puddle actually formed in that very piece of real estate now known as the rat zone. At the time, the problem was addressed via large fans placed in the hallway with the air directed outside through the rear door. Those fans roared all day long.People said: “OK, that'll dry out the carpet. But why don’t they fix the cause of the problem? The building clearly leaks like a sieve!”
Supposedly, "they" did fix the problem, but I have my doubts.
* * *
A year or so ago, our office (along with one or two contiguous offices) were surrounded by red or yellow police tape. Upon these office doors were affixed official notices alerting passers-by to the grave mold dangers within.That was, of course, the notorious 2013 A200 mold scare, not to be confused with the even more dire 2005 A200 mold scare (see).
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| It never ends |
* * *
Naturally, this "rat" business has been a source of amusement more than alarm—largely, I think, because we in the School of Humanities (and the School of Languages & Learning Resources) are all looking forward to being moved to a brand new building (A400) in late Spring or Fall.We are assuming, of course, that our new digs will be rat- and mold- and puddle-free.
Yeah.
