Monday, October 19, 2020

13 Rats of Halloween #1

Like in years past -- last year we did cakes, the year before it was mustaches -- I have settled upon a Halloween theme with which we'll spend the final 13 days of October, but unlike years past this year's choice was anything but random. A weird confluence of skittering rodent incantations seemed to suddenly whisper my name, and so here we are -- for 2020 I will be counting down "The 13 Rats of Halloween." We are in The Year of The Rat after all, and I don't just mean Donald Trump.

I had mostly decided on this theme a few days ago when suddenly I was watching Friday the 13th: Part 2 (on that amazing new blu-ray boxed-set of the entire franchise that just came out) and this scene happened -- with our Final Girl Ginny's hiding place getting the ol' Rattus Interruptus -- confirming it once and for all for me. We're ramblin' rodents this year!

What are your feelings on rats? As a New Yorker I'm pretty used to seeing them, I see them on a near daily basis on the subway tracks -- they don't absolutely terrify me like bugs, which I momentarily considered but... I can't. I can't fill this site with images of bugs, I wouldn't be able to even come here -- but I still wouldn't want a rat, you know, ON ME or anything. 

But if there was an insane mass murderer a few feet away wielding a pitchfork with ill intent I like to think that I could probably, even with a rat crawling on me, keep my mouth shut long enough for him to go away. Do I overestimate myself? Oh definitely. I'm a "Person who dies first in a horror movie" if ever there was one. There are no Final Girls around these parts, my friends.


2 comments:

Shawny said...

A friend of mine lived in New Orleans in the 90’s. He swore at the time that this was true. He told me his roommate at the time told him he woke up in bed in the middle of the night to find, on his chest and chin, a rat licking the moisture out of his mouth. How’s that for a horror story?

Aquinas1220 said...

Any rodent scurrying across the floor will cause in me the most repulsive, horrified and unintended body spasms. Not sure what fear they tap into for me, but I can take any roach, spider, centipede, or random creepy crawly over rats and mice.