Over the preceding six months, the family began complaining of a rodent invasion. Initially, they thought their particular plague was mice. But what I smelled wasn’t a mouse. I, who was whelped under farmhouse stairs, who prowled the chicken house as a puppy and stuck my nose in every hole around their feed, recognized the odor of a rat. The entire neighborhood, block upon block, seemed suddenly overrun by rats. But they stayed out of sight and underground. They could be heard but not seen, and they impudently left their fecal calling cards on every carpet and countertop of the homes they raided.
My owners, city dwellers with whom I had lived for only a year following my rescue from a shelter, decided that I would best serve the family by menacing the rodents in their apparent hidey-hole, the basement. My very presence was supposed to be a sufficient deterrent to their activities. With me guarding the basement stairs each night, I would spoil any designs they had on a comfortable permanent residency.
On the first night of my vigil, I was fed and brought downstairs by the husband. He patted my head and repeatedly told me, “Good Boy. You keep the critters from coming upstairs tonight. Okay, Woody? There’s a good boy.” He administered a soft treat from his pocket, clipped on a chain he had already attached to a drainage pipe, and turned to leave. I watched him ascend the open stairs to the warmth of the kitchen above, and the light went off. I stood alone in a darkness I could not yet see in.
Initially, it was very still. The smell of humans had not abated, and this kept my adversaries away. As my vision eventually expanded and sharpened, I saw roaches begin scuttling out from between cinder blocks and along the makeshift baseboards. Roaches have instincts instead of ears and are always the first to emerge. Therefore, they are the unwitting scouts for the mammals, an oblivious first-line detachment. As soon as the light was off, out they came, tapping their feelers against the cement like little blind men.
Sounds came from upstairs. Laughter, the clatter of dishes, the jangle of silverware. It was dinnertime in the human world. After a few moments of inhaling the scent of pork roast and potatoes boiled in their jackets, I heard the slapping drip of fluid on concrete and realized, with shame, that I was salivating.
It was not complacency that I felt down there, even though this was my home, my province. I recognized the trouble I was in. On one hand, my slavering was triggered by the odors that had begun to permeate every nearby cranny of the basement, and on the other hand, it was a nervous response, one I would not have had upstairs, where the aromas were stronger still. The potent and complicated undercurrent to that heady smell of food was the smell of them. They stank in a way that made me anxious, in a way that made my teeth clack together with involuntary anticipation. I wanted them to come out. Yet, at the same time, I wanted to run upstairs and escape. I wanted my plaid bed, my tooth-ravaged toys. I moved toward the stairs, but was seized by the chain.
There were at least twenty-five shadowy forms that began to crawl from the gloom, and the number seemed to grow. Their little eyes were luminous in the basement half light and had a glinting, emerald-colored brilliance. I did not bark. I knew this would not scare them. These were city rats. Country rats, fattened and encumbered by the beneficent carelessness of farmers and an array of untidy troughs and corncribs, could easily be frightened by a single bark, by a bluffed charge in their direction. But the rats that stood before me now were lean and squint-eyed, looking sideways at me and sizing me up in terms of shank, brisket, flank, tip, and sirloin. For the very first time in my life, I was glad to have been relieved of my testicles, as rats are not honorable. They will not spare you sexual degradation. In fact, it is the first offensive line they undertake.
One of the rats was standing apart from the others. He had, as many of them do, a set of prominent upper teeth that projected from his lips like a spade. His whiskers trembled.
“Well, well. What do we have here? Beloved Semper Fidelis? In arduis fidelis.”
I was astonished that he could speak the language of humans, as I could not. After years of living with them, I could understand their words, but could make only meaningless yelps in reply. For most animals, communication is limited. And, generally speaking, one species cannot comprehend the expressions of another. But all quadrupeds share an elemental understanding, which is communicated through the orientation of the ears, through the display of teeth, through tension, stance, and gaze. Also, there is scent. I knew I was releasing the odor of fear in concentrated waves. I could smell it coming, pungent and sharp, from my own flesh. I watched the principal rat’s nose twitch and pleat, sensing. He was determining the magnitude of my terror and instantly understood that it would be necessary to do little to evacuate my bowels.
He shook his tiny head, and I noticed then that a fair portion of one ear was missing. “Look at you. Your whiskers are still dusted with dog food. And I smell it on you. You’re a well fed one, aren’t you? You, Dear Innocent, will be the reason my friends and progeny will not need to scale the dumpster flanks on 11th Street tonight. You can be glad to think of yourself as servant to the underprivileged of your community.”
He turned to face the rats standing quietly behind him. He raised a tiny, claw-pronged paw and shouted, “Pro bono publico!”
The rats collectively cheered. I saw then that they had increased exponentially in their numbers. Tiny green eyes glittered like gems in a vast mine of outlying darkness. He turned back to me. “I believe your name is Woody, isn’t it?”
I could not reply, so I sat down to signal assent.
“Woody, you stand with us at the threshold of a new dawn.” He sat back against the basement stair wall, crossed his legs, and folded his little claws on his lap. “You see that there are many of us. Consider this night the commencement of an uprising, of our revolution. For hundreds and hundreds of years, we have lived in the shadow of mankind. We have stolen from them when necessary, but largely, we have made ourselves content to live on their discards, on their trash. We were content to do so only because our forefathers believed it was the only way. Yet we are meant for more, so much more. Now Woody, my generation and those behind me will effect monumental change. In umbra, igitur, pugnabimus!”
There was another explosive cheer from the rat masses nearby. I trained my eyes on the speaker, yet extended my consciousness to the crowd at my left, trying to determine whether or not they had quietly advanced on me. I kept my ears upright and my mouth closed, in a look of attentiveness. The very last thing I wanted was to incite their attack because I did not have the appropriate demeanor or because I looked intractable and threatening.
Trembling, I made an appeal to him. I rolled to my side and lifted my leg to the air to present my stomach. I knew he would understand this as my submission to him.
“Woody, you are one of nature’s good creatures. And you offer to join us, you offer us protection, don’t you? But Woody, my Innocent, there are many practical reasons not to accept your gracious proposal. Firstly, you are too large and too conspicuous. You cannot follow us to safety, and you cannot live where we do, behind drywall and under subflooring. And by remaining near us, you will call attention to our hiding places. Also, you have lived with the humans too long. You will miss them. But principally damning for you, Woody, is that you have a soul. I can see it in you. Souls make for a softhearted militia.” He paused, felt his whiskers from root to tip, thinking.
“No, Woody, I did not say weak. I said softhearted. Easily manipulated. Occasionally unable to make the remorseless choices. You understand?”
I again lifted my leg to express my comprehension. The rat population waited quietly in the shadows of the neighboring room. I could hear nothing upstairs. The family had retired to the second floor for the night. Inside myself, I wept.
“What I ask of you, Woody, is sacrifice. Sacrifice of what kind, you ask?”
I knew what kind. I unwillingly released a low whimper. I remembered my mother, her warm milk under the farmhouse stairs, my plaid bed, my chew toys. I remembered walks in the farm fields, the rank aroma of warm cow patties, the texture of denim overalls against my muzzle, the acrid smell of the city buses in my new life, and the taste of canned dog food mixed with table scraps. I prepared to part with it all.
“Don’t think of it that way, Woody. Consider it nourishing the bodies of warriors!” He stood and beat his chest with a small furry paw. “This, Woody is fate! Fate! You were meant to aid our cause in this way. Summum Bonum!”
A ripple of electricity seemed to travel through the crowd of rats standing nearby. I saw them twitch with anticipation. “Think of Heaven, Woody. Think of a great, silvery way paved by constellations. You will be among them. Think of the good you are doing. Lay down for us now, Woody. Good, good boy. Your courage and your charity will not go unrewarded.”
Before they descended on me, I heard him say, almost tenderly, “Woody, my Innocent, such is the pathway to the stars.”
