Doctor Rat (17 page)

Naturally, the rebel rats are in awe of this box and don’t even want to come near it. Yes, it’s a gas chamber. The victim, ah, prisoner, excuse me, the
scientific-sacrifice
is brought to the box by the Learned Professor, who is able to view the sacrifice through a little glass window in the box. I’m able to peek out that window now, just my nose and eyes, watching the stupid resistance troops rushing around, chasing their tails. I might as well lie back awhile and relax. There’s a nice cotton wad here for a pillow. Naturally, there’s no chloroform in it at the moment, or I’d be
kaput
. Occasionally the Learned Professor uses coal gas, which turns the vessels bright red. We get marvelous specimens that way.

And the Killing Box allows us to test some of the delightful new war gases. We’ve got a marvelous collection here, with samples dating right back to the magnificent German product Cyclone B. In our quiet patriotic way, we Learned American Doctors are trying to improve upon that potency—and we’ve got an endless supply of rodents to test it on. How grand that the Rodentia family is so large. We’re able to supply squirrels, mice, voles, guinea pigs, beavers, and even an occasional porcupine! What an honor!

I cannot fail to be impressed each time the Learned Professor makes a selection for the Killing Box. With just the lightest flick of his pencil he points to the rats who will be offered up to science. Such power. Such finesse. The Learned Pro has countless obscure papers to his credit and is, of course, my idol. A veritable superman, in my opinion, with his Advanced Committee on the Preparation and Mounting of the Skeleton.

Lifting the lid of the Killing Box, I allow only the tip of my nose to protrude. Sniffing all around. The resistance rebels have gone searching for me in some other part of the lab.

Furtively, I sneak out and gently lower the lid. I’ll dissect a few necks before this night is out, dear students. Just follow Doctor Rat along the floor. Feel every little change of air pressure in your whiskers. We’re moving stealthfully. Is your scalpel sharpened? This is going to be a delicate work, dedicated to the memory of Claude Bernard. May I be worthy of his blessing on this night of nights, the dark night of Doctor Rat.

“Hi there, big boy…”

“What? Who—wha—” A lovely female
norvegicus
standing in the doorway of a simulated burrow.

“Come on in and have some fun.” She slinks slowly up to me, twirling her tail seductively.

“I’m sorry, much as I admire your hypothetically suitable burrow structure, I—”

“Come on and just sniff it a little.”

She shakes her hips and arches her back toward me. I could just take a little whiff to fortify myself.

“Oh, yes, honey, that’s the stuff. Now give me some paw…”

My goodness, I’ve excited her. I didn’t know I had it in me. I might just give her a little paw, pawing the genital region as described in the Clark and Bridges report on…on…

“Oh, ratty, you’re so
bad.
”

“Am I? Really? I never—I didn’t—”

“Oh honey, come on…quick.”

She dives into her burrow! And I’m trembling all over, with an…irresistible urge to…roll around at the entrance to her burrow! Yes, I’m rolling around, rolling in her scent which she’s deliberately set out. Oh…oh…

“Come…
in!”

She wraps her tail around my neck and yanks me into the burrow. It’s a very lovely system of tunnels she’s got here, dug into the embankment of dirt the Learned Professor lugged into the lab. Deeper and deeper we go, she leading me, her tail wrapped around the end of my nose.
Eau de Rattus Norvegicus,
oh la la.

“I feel I should tell you—I mean, you really ought to know that I don’t have any—that I was—”

“Please, honey, not now.” She drags me still deeper into the dark burrow system. No drafts. All the rocks hauled out. What a tidy little place. I should really prepare a paper on it and send it over to the Sociology Department; they love this sort of thing. Now she’s rolling a ball of mud with her nose, closing off the entrance to the burrow.

“Nobody will bother us now, darling.”

High incidence of burrow sealing, Atkinson and Davis,
Sociological Transport Studies,
1956. I’ve got a gold mine of pertinent details here, but this female won’t give me a chance to make any memos in triplicate, and I find myself approaching her, stamping my paws on the floor of the burrow.

Rigid-legged…back arched…stamping…now rolling a little rock toward her, which she rolls back. She stamps, we stamp, rocking and rolling. One hind leg in the air, now the other, twisting, round and round.

“Honey, you sure can dance.”

“Just a little thing I picked up.”

Everything in this burrow is saturated with her scent. It’s driving me nuts. If only I had some, if only…if only…

“Come on, big boy, bite me on the neck a little.”

She turns around and lowers her chest to the ground. How beautiful she is, with her hind legs extended and her back arched. Her head is held high and I can’t resist leaning over and giving her a little nibble on the neck.

Our bodies touch.

“Intromission, honey,
now!

She gyrates her behind, lifts her tail. I… I…try…try…

“Honey, sock it to me. Sock it to me
now!
”

I try to sock it to her…but it won’t…it won’t…the penis will not become engorged with blood and the support bone (os penis) does not support (cf.
The Castrated Rat,
Bentley and Swen, 1956).

“Honey, what’s wrong with you!” She pulls away suddenly, knocking me off balance, in the customary way. But unlike the virile male I do not sit here, happily licking my penis. All I can do is make a few professional notes, which will bring me more enduring satisfaction when I see them published in
Science Today.

She eyes me carefully. “Honey, haven’t you got any…”

“I am indebted to the Learned Professor for his having assisted me in the emasculation experiment I underwent shortly after my birth. Without his collaboration and the cooperation of the university this paper would not have been possible.”

“Well, I’m hot to trot, darling, and I’ve got to get a soldier rat who can
do it to me.
”

“Futile pleasures, lasting only for a second.”

“Yes, honey but we can do it a thousand times a night and that ain’t so bad…”

She’s off through the burrow and pretty soon this place is going to be swarming with soldiers. I know the scene; Collins and Moffit have described it thoroughly in their monograph. Rats will be coming in every doorway, righting, brawling, clicking their teeth. I’ve got to get out of here while I still can.

Tunneling then, through the dirt, scraping with my paws and tossing aside stones. I wish I could have socked it to her for scientific reasons, to better perceive the little nuances of intromission.

“Where is the meeting going to be, Mother?”

“At the place where men have given bears a share.” Perhaps he will be there, the strong black male who mounted me, thrilling my heart. It was springtime in the valley; I’d left my scent where it could be found. I listened for him coming through the pines, heard him growling and raising his claws high up on the tree and scratching. He scratched higher up than any I’d ever seen before.

“At the dump, Mother? Is that where it’s going to be?”

But I kept moving, for I didn’t want him to find me too quickly. Quick enough, but not too quickly. So that his desire would be greater, I kept moving. I crossed the stream but left my perfume on the rocks. He didn’t bother to fish, though the salmon were upstream then. He charged into the water. I watched him from above, high on the bank. I was surrounded by the little trees that grow on the bank. He couldn’t see me. But I could see him—he was standing up in the water, sniffing at the air, because he knew I was close by somewhere. I saw how big he was then, even before I’d seen his marks on the trees.

I thought we’d mate on the top of the bank, because of the soft moss there, but something in me grew frightened when I saw him leap from the stream and jump at the bank.

“Will all the other bears be there, Mother?”

“Yes, I think so.” But will he still be in this forest? There are further forests and I know that he liked to roam. He may be meeting at some other dump, far away, with a lot of other females all around, sniffing him. It makes me feel strange inside to think of that, I don’t know why.

“And will the raccoons be there?”

When I saw him that way, clawing at the bank, I ran as fast as I could. There was just the beating of my heart and the branches snapping around me. His roar sounded in the valley as he climbed the bank. I knew he would catch me. I wanted him to catch me, but I couldn’t stop running.

“Look, Mother, there are the deer! Have you ever seen so many?”

I could hear him behind me, much faster than I. I could hear his heavy breathing. I stopped then, not wanting to seem afraid. He came through the trees, his chest heaving. The wind blew over him, bringing me his scent. I felt like a frightened colt. His scent was powerful and strange, and my own perfume was mixed with it. His steps were slow as he came toward me. It was like the taste of the honeycomb as he came slowly toward me, sweet and painful, delicious and frightening, forbidden yet impossible to resist. I roared and he answered me, beginning to circle.

We chased around slowly in the thicket, over the fallen trees. His mouth was open, his tongue hanging out from running. But he wasn’t tired, not at all. I was trembling inside; I saw the peculiar dark spot on his neck. I was shot there, he said, that’s where they shot me. And I ran, he said, with the dogs after me but they couldn’t catch me. I took pawfuls of pine needles and pitch, he said, and jammed it in the wound. You must do that if you are ever wounded and bleeding, for it will stop the blood from flowing and will make it harden. I tired those dogs before evening and continued running through the night.

“Oh, Mother, look, there are the groundhogs!”

So he circled slowly, then leapt so fast he was just a blur. He held me with legs as thick and unbending as great trees. My body raged and I roared as he entered me, but then suddenly my ferociousness was gone. There were flowers all around us. I was like a cub again as he enjoyed me. I felt his whole life moving through me. I knew his secret trails all at once, knew everything about him in an instant, or thought I did, though perhaps we can never fully know an old male’s heart. I knew he was strong and feared nothing, not men or dogs or the dark shadows that move in the forest at night. Perhaps he felt all the things I’ve known, and took them away with him.

“Mother, such a lot of foxes! Look at their beautiful tails! Have you ever seen so many foxes? This is going to be a wonderful meeting!”

Then we walked slowly along together, our bodies touching. The bittersweet feeling was all through me, knowing that he would be leaving me. But he made me put aside that feeling in the meadow, made me run with him, run with no thought or feeling, only our bodies gliding through the spring flowers.

“I can see the smoke from the dump, Mother! There are a whole lot of moose! Aren’t they grand-looking, Momma, so tall…”

There was an old orchard in the meadow. We lay down together beneath the apple trees. The blossoms were out, all white and smelling sweet. We lay in the sun. I can feel even now the weight of his body against mine. The swallows from the falling-down barn swooped in over us, teasing us, because they saw how satisfied we were. For a moment I felt I was light as a swallow, with a shining little breast. He was looking at me deeply, speaking with his eyes as only an old male can, communicating the vastness of his territory as well as the little things he enjoyed, like the sound of a mole tunneling quickly in springtime. I like that, he said. I like to hear the mole tunneling so fast in springtime. He tunnels faster then than at any other time. He sends the dirt flying, because he’s tunneling toward a female!

“Momma, when we get to the dump, can I roll in the tin cans?”

We left the meadow and went through the soft wet ground, where I showed him the pool of bubbling water. The fish in it were very small and darted away when they saw us. We drank there. The water was coming up through the soft mud, making gentle noises. I had a few sips; when I looked up he was gone. The old males move so quietly. They leave you so quietly when they go. Very high on the wind, the woodcock was swooping and diving. I sat for a long while, listening to the high-pitched sound of the wings, and staring into the bubbling water. I sat so still the little fish returned, not knowing I was there, and I didn’t bother them.

“Mother, there are the skunks! A long line of them! We won’t go near them, and get sprayed in the eye.”

But later I followed his trail, not with the hope of finding him because I knew he was gone. I found his claw marks high up on a tree and couldn’t reach them.

Tunneling my way out of this burrow, breaking through the last layers of dirt—sticking my nose into the air again, close by the rebel speechmakers. Big shots. With a lot of hifalutin ideas. But do they submit their views in triplicate? Do they have any important obscure papers published? There isn’t one of these rebels who troubles about footnotes, bibliography, index.

But just look there, on the Learned Professor’s desk. The nearly completed manuscript of his book on Queenie the chimp—wonderfully detailed—in which he proves conclusively that injury to the motor cortex paralyzes her arm. And more important, that when she wakes up and finds her arm won’t function,
she is surprised.

This last point is particularly significant, and is presented most fully, with massive cross-references and annotation. As well it should be, for Queenie was
so
surprised when she woke up and found her arm was useless that she chewed off the ends of her fingers, and exposed all the muscles from her wrist to her forearm.

Son of a bald-headed old
rattus norvegicus
! The rebels are trying to free our test monkey from his restraint chair; they’re chewing right through his arm and ankle straps!