My house is infested. Sort of. Actually, I volunteered to babysit D.J. and Dakota’s rats for the weekend, but there are only two of them (and not likely to be more, since they’re both females). I know nothing about rats (and I don’t even remember the names of these two), but apparently I don’t have to do much. Nobody would trust me with a pet that requires a lot of care, that’s for sure.

They slept most of the day away, which makes me slightly envious and deeply appreciative. This evening while they were awake, I opened the cage and offered to take them out. They were curious, sniffing my hands and acting as if they were going to let me handle them. But they backed off, and I didn’t want to force the issue. I know I wouldn’t want someone sticking their hand into my cage and yanking me out of it.

No, it doesn’t make me want a pet. I can’t afford to want a pet, because my landlord doesn’t want me to have one, and he’s already told me he’s planning to raise my rent twice this year. It’s the first (and second) time my rent has gone up since I moved in here six and a half years ago, so I can’t really complain. He told me he likes having me as a tenant (so maybe I could complain and get away with it, but I won’t).

Not that the landlord has to do anything around here that costs him very much. I had him stop the neighborhood punks from throwing rocks at my roof, so I guess it was worth that month’s rent, at least. But he doesn’t care about the ruts in my driveway that fill up with muddy water when it rains. I don’t have much of a complaint there, either, since it was such a dry winter. If I did have something to complain about, I guess I’d be able to test how valuable I really am as a tenant. That’s not really my style, though.

Anyway, I got out into the yard and did some mowing today. Even with as little rain as we’ve had, the grasses have grown waist-high, lush and green. It was my pleasure to mow them down, at least the one small patch I could get done before I ran out of gas. That would be me, personally, running out of gas, since the mower runs on a rechargeable battery, and there’s no way I can use it long enough at one time to run down the juice.

The one drawback of having the rats here is that my house is starting to smell a little like a middle school boys’ room. It’s been over forty years since I’ve been in one, but I spent three years of my life hiding in them, so I know that smell. The rats aren’t quite as overpowering, but if I can smell them at all, I know they’re fairly potent. On the other hand, I’m not sure my house smells all that good under normal circumstances.