Tag: kurt

Kurt has died

On Tuesday 30 November 2010, Kurt died. I have only gotten to writing a proper encomium now, three months later. In the morning of that day I saw him eagerly scratching to get out of his cage as he does every morning when he hears that I am awake. But I was running a little late in my routine, so I didn’t let him out for the oatmeal breakfast he usually takes alongside me. I left for work at 12:30 pm without letting him out. When I got home at 9:30 pm, I went into the kitchen and had a glass of water without hearing him stir. When I went over to his cage I found him in the typical dead rodent position and I knew immediately he was dead. I bagged him up and put him in the freezer. A necropsy will rule out or confirm my suspicion: an upper gastrointestinal bleed from swallowing a piece of his cage. He had a little blood around his anus and a few dark, compact turds in his cage consistent with passing blood. Not finding any wire in his gut would make me feel a little less guilty over his death.

I will stuff Kurt to have him around. I already have the borax and cotton balls. I will miss him. I am glad I took dozens of pictures of him recently. I keep thinking about him. I feel bad about leaving the chicken-wire with him and about not taking him out in the morning like I usually do. I knew he had been picking at the top of his cage but I didn’t consider that he would swallow any wire. Still, he had a good life, and two and a half years is a long time for a rat. Also I don’t think he suffered when he died. Indeed it may have had nothing to do with the wire. An information pamphlet from the Humane Society tells me that 2.5 to 3 years is a normal lifespan for a rat. I had thought it was longer. But recalling my previous three rat companions (Razar, Sasha, and Rat), I realize that each of them had lived about that long. It only seemed like longer because I was a kid.

I mentioned an informational pamphlet from the Humane Society. I have it because I have already adopted another rat. I have named him Carl (an improvement over “Dozer,” his previous name) and he is from a group of three brother rats. He is named after Carl Sagan, just as Kurt was named after Kurt Vonnegut. He cost five bucks. He is already 2.2 years old, so he doesn’t have much time left, as if a rat ever does. I have already introduced Carl to my friends and family and taken a bunch of pictures of him. He has adopted many of the same habits and idiosyncrasies of Kurt. We have bonded well. I hope his two brothers are in a good home.

Recent pests and parasites I have encountered

5 Sep 10

Journal

Recent pests and parasites I have encountered

As much as I appreciate insects and other invertebrates as objects of study, I have had far too much personal experience with small pests and parasites of their ilk recently. I will describe each encounter presently, in order of their offensiveness. The first came when I left work at about ten at night a few days ago. Numerous toads hopped about on the path to my car as they usually do at this time of year. One juvenile, however, did not flee as I walked near it. I bent down to look at it and discovered it was injured in some way. Worse, even: on its back was a group of tiny, writhing larvae. There were eight to ten of them in a nasty little bundle on its back, lodged deeply into a lesion that no doubt extended into the poor toad’s thorax. The toad was moribund. I wanted to put it out of its misery and prevent the parasites from infecting other amphibians, so I brought the toad home in my lunchbox and put it in the freezer, larvae and all.

The next, second most offensive pest or parasite came to my attention when I picked up my sister’s new dog’s poop the other day. I had noticed little white specks around his anus that I assumed were bits of paper. When I picked up the poop, though, I saw little worms, fluke-shaped, squirming about in it. They extended like leeches from a third of an inch to an inch and a half as they tried to flee their first-ever exposure to sunlight. The white specks on the dog’s butt hairs were in fact dead, dried worms. And the worms appeared in greatest profusion in the dog’s morning poop. One can hardly be surprised at the parasites that come in a dog adopted from a state like Oklahoma.

The final and most offensive pest or parasite was a bug I found in my own apartment. After an absence of several days I returned to find that water had leaked through my roof and saturated some wood in the closet. Hours after cleaning up the immediate mess I turned a corner to find a roach fleeing the light! Was it really a roach? Do roaches even live in Minnesota? I would find out during the post-mortem! I swatted at it with a Swiffer broom, spilling its yellow innards across the floor. The roach still twitching, I put it under a petri dish for observation. Two days later it died, and an internet search confirmed the insect was an Oriental cockroach (Blatta orientalis), “considered the filthiest of cockroaches because it loves moisture and emits a foul odor.” Its forebears were called “stink mothes” before it was named systematically. Sure enough, it smelled terrible, and my rat Kurt was crazed to get at it. I wouldn’t let him eat it though, of course. That would be gross.

In sum I like bugs only insofar as I can maintain a critical distance from them, so to speak. I enjoy learning about them, observing them, capturing them, and releasing them. But to have to pick them off my own pet, to see a nice young toad fall victim to them, and to kill “stink mothes” in the place where I sleep and eat… That is just too close for comfort. My feelings might be likened to those of a gynecologist who is up to his elbows in diseased vaginas all day, but who when he goes home to his beautiful healthy wife, wants nothing more than to sit down and do a crossword puzzle with no thought of sex.