French Quarter Rat…

French Quarter Rat:

I’ve been intending to write about this ever since our last trip to New Orleans but alas, life intervenes. However, I have been meaning to blog more regularly and since this is the first of the month and my love of order and such is a compelling force, this seems like a good day to start.

First of all it is important for you to understand how I feel about rodents. As a young wife with a couple of small children I once saw a mouse run under the stove. The fields next to us had just been plowed and I suppose this disrupted the mouse population, one of whom thought he would scout out new digs in my kitchen (perhaps he had heard we had a couple of crumb droppers). I immediately jumped up on the counter and with my heart racing I called David at work. Bless his heart, he did come home to deal with this dire, life threatening emergency. Fortunately the kids were napping but I spent the time it took David to drive home worrying about what I would do if they awakened. David was greatly amused to find his normally rational wife sitting on the counter when he came home. I don’t recall exactly what happened after that. I’m sure it involved trap setting and all that but there are some things I try to block from my memory.

Since that time my ability to cope with the occasional mouse sighting hasn’t progressed much. Fortunately we haven’t had much of a problem in that regard. I would like to say it is because our cat is a great mouser but I honestly don’t think Malory the Magnificent would be all that interested if a mouse showed up. No, I think the wild cats in the neighborhood are more likely the reason we don’t have a mouse problem. Now that I’ve written that you can bet we will have a mouse in the house within the week.

So, okay, I have heard there are rats in the French Quarter. The fact that I have been able to cope with that knowledge is evidence of my great love for this place. Either that or my great powers of denial. One night we were chatting with our friend, Debi, at Tropical Isle. She asked if we had already left before the rat showed up the night before. Fortunately we had left before its arrival but apparently while on stage singing, Debi noticed a look on her husband’s face (he sings and plays the lead guitar) and somehow just knew he had spotted a rat. Since she shares my totally rational, completely understandable dislike of rodents she finished the song while carefully averting her gaze from the floor. That is what is meant by the saying, “The show must go on!”. Brave girl. After the song was over she asked Bryan, “Where is it and how big?”. He tried to feign ignorance at first but finally admitted that a pretty good size rat had come out on the dance floor during that last song and just sat there looking at them. Right in the midst of all the bar patrons dancing and enjoying the music, completely unaware of the rat. Perhaps the band should be flattered that the rat seemingly appreciated their musical efforts. I must admit that his taste in music is pretty impressive, particularly for a rodent.

But all good things must come to an end and so it was for this particular rat. One of the bar tenders caught it in a box and removed it from the building. I don’t know the details of what transpired after that which is just fine with me. Remember that denial thing? Debi and I had planned our strategy in case we spotted one (this involved screaming and jumping up on the bar) but lucky for us all there were no further rat sightings while we were there.