This Will Tell You Everything You Ever Needed to Know About Me

subtitle: The Time I Was a Foster Mom

One sunny afternoon I was on my way to my little studio, located about 10 minutes from my place when you take the "back road". This "back road" is actually a four lane (used to be two) highway that plows through miles of wooded area. I enjoy passing through this area because of all the trees on either side of the highway. And kudzu. Cause I like kudzu. And because I have an active imagination, as I drive I like to imagine that on either side of the road there's something awesome living in all that creepy kudzu. I'm pretty sure there is, actually.

Anyhoo, at some point, when closer to the residential area, the four-lane becomes two again. About two minutes from my studio we cover a small patch of road in front of an auto body place and opposite that place on the other side of the road is a field of grass and kudzu. For the grass, someone maintains it, so it's not overgrown, but once you reach the edge of it, that kudzu starts and that stuff goes on in every direction as far as the eye can see. On the other side of that kudzu field is the interstate and highway. There, setting.

As we neared the auto body place, I noticed something large and dark in the road. A bit closer and I noted it had fur. I was disappointed to see this roadkill, as I always am whenever I see roadkill. It was dead right in the middle of the road, on the yellow dotted line. (I always avoid driving over roadkill. Let's not rekill it. No need to make it messier. I mean, damn. The little guy was just trying to get somewhere. Didn't know it was going to be his or her last day on Earth. Poor dog...) As we got a bit closer I thought that whole shape of it was odd and the color of this particular dog's coat was interesting, it was just very dark brown and seemed weird. We passed it, and just as we did I got a better look. I only saw a big shape, no definitive parts, but the coat...

"Oh, my God, it's a beaver?!"

...was what I exclaimed from my side in the passenger seat. Cause I wasn't driving this time. I was now both sad and excited. Because I've never seen one before, except on Discovery and other such channels. That's where I get most of my wildlife, sadly. Anyhoo...

Beaver!! Cute little funny faced dam-building things! This is a surprise because we don't have beavers here. I was thinking that as we drove right on passed it, and I turn around in my seat to get a look at it again. I almost said, "Stop the car." There were other cars directly behind us and others going in the opposite direction in the other lane, and I watched as they whizzed by the poor guy full speed, barely missing it. The lanes weren't very wide, I knew it was only a matter of time before someone splatted it for good. I was sad for it. Just as I was about to turn back around in my seat and sit back down, just as I was about to look away from it...and we'd gotten far enough away that the shape was a tiny dark spot on the road...I saw part of that dark spot rise a tiny bit above the rest. And I felt my eyeballs grow huge and let out a gasp. He lifted his head!!!

Oh my gosh, it's alive!!! Stop the car!! And the next full minute went something like:

Stop the car!

What? For what?
It's alive!

Well, what do you think you're gonna do?
Just turn around, go back.
Nuh-uh.
We have to go back, somebody's gonna run him over!
No
Why?!
It's a dead animal in the road..
It's ALIVE.
What? We're not going back there...
I am!
Nuh-uh.

Etc, etc. After we arrived at the building and the driver had gone inside, I hopped out and bolted upstairs to my studio. Knocking stuff all over the place, I went to work packing a few items...


I kept a bunch of those metal and plastic milk crates in there, so I grabbed one of those and threw a few old towels that I use for paint cleanup in there, along with a squeaky clean pair of my bright yellow latex gloves that I use for working with a lot of cleaning solvents. I also threw in a bunch of newspaper and a roll of paper towels, I dunno, just figured you never know what's handy.
I ran downstairs to where the driver was, plucked those keys, and ran back out the door. Threw the crate in the backseat, and was peeling out of the parking lot. It only took a minute to get there, but the entire time I was praying that I would not find a brown blob with it's guts smashed everywhere. That road and that spot is a very high traffic area during afternoon hours, it's really swarming with vehicles. As I rounded the corner, I froze. It was gone!!!!

The road was brown blob free. "Oh noes, where is it?!?!" I said this outloud. To no one. I came to the exact spot where it'd been. There was nothing, not even blood or anything. Now, this is where I start to be a tiny bit confused. I don't hallucinate. Not unless I've gone passed day four of no sleep. And I know a damn dam-builder when I see one. And I damn well know when one pathetically picks his head up for a second to plead Don't leave me here with his furry little head.

Balls!!! Where is it?? So I pass the spot, piss off some woman behind me by pulling a U-turn (hey, I signaled) and come back up the road on the side we'd originally come in on... And I see him! On the shoulder, next to grassy field! It's barely wide enough to hold a bike or person walking, he wasn't safe there either. Seeing all the tire marks from cars that swerved into that shoulder all the time, proved that well enough.
At first, I wonder if one of the cars struck him so hard it bounced him over to that side, which saddened me again. I mean, surely now he really is dead, right? I pulled ahead, put on the hazards and jumped out. Now I'm little bit curious still, because as I said, we don't have beavers. But as I walk closer, I noticed it's body doesn't exactly conform to that, and then I think, 'what the hell is it then? Then I finally got a look at it, the head and the tail.

"Ohhhh!! I think.... Yes, I think you're a muskrat!! Well, let's get outta here."

I said this aloud as well. I'd never seen a muskrat in person before either, so I have no idea how I knew to jump to that. He somehow managed to crawl from the center road to the side, and was now exhausted. It didn't move at all, except blinking. I didn't have time to really ponder him all that much at that moment though
--cars whizzing by in the opposite lane, cars that had arrived behind mine that couldn't get past mine, people honking at the line that was starting to form, me standing on the shoulder, talking to a catatonic muskrat ---
So I grabbed the crate outta the backseat and made a little padding out of newspaper and one of the towels. I donned my bright yellow latex gloves , sat the crate down next to him, apologized if he might be scared of me, gently picked him up (and immediately wished I'd done more pull ups or something because he was very heavy) and placed him in the crate.

At this point no one was honking, they were just staring through their windows at me like "WTF?" It was either my telepathic direction: " F off! I'm trying to save a life here!" or they were just confused.


I placed the crate in the passenger seat, covered it with the other towel to make it quieter and dark, headed back to my studio with Horace. Oh, sometime in the next 20 minutes, while bumbling around my studio, trying to clean up the mess I'd just made looking for stuff, I named him Horace.

Day One

The first thing I noticed about Horace was that he was smelly. Not babydiaper or bad eggs smelly, but fresh dirt, woodsy and mud smelly. Which wasn't terrible, just strong. He wasn't muddy, but he was damp. I placed him in the corner of the room on his little newspaper/towel bed, and toweled him off a little, but not too much. I really wanted to kind of let him be in a still, quiet place. He was surely traumatized, lying in the road for who knows how long as monster machines roared by him every second. I mean, geez, how would YOU feel? He sat on his little bed, occasionally blinked, but otherwise did not move.
I popped on my headphones so as not to disturb him, and went to work on my painting, keeping a watchful eye on my little muskrat Horace.

I look nothing like this clip art. Except for that painting maybe.

A few hours later, I tried to get him to drink some water. Dunno how I thought I was going to do that. I put a shallow dish with water in front of his nose and nothing happened. He just sorta swept his whiskers (HUGE set of whiskers on Horace) across the water while trying to turn his head away.
Pshaw. Well, I think trauma victims need water. That's what tv says.

So I got a plastic spoon and dribbled some on his nose. Whisker wiggle. Wholly uninterested. So I wrapped him in the towel, and hauled him up, sat in my big leather studio chair, and held him like a baby on my lap. Horace was smelly, but I didn't care. Also, did I mention that he was gianormous?? I needed both hands free to actually lift and turn him onto his back so that I had access to his mouth. Wow! The teeth on this thing. Huge and extremely yellow. Looked a little dangerous if he ever wanted to bite.
I have to say that as a rat fan, I've kept ratties before, and just handled a lot of them. Bitten by a rat hurts more than the one time I was bitten by a Rottweiler. True. But then I thought, nah, muskrats don't bite!...well, they probably do, but Horace won't bite me!...

Using the overturned crate next to me as a table, I spent a little time spooning water into his open mouth and making him swallow it. It spilled everywhere, and at first he didn't seem interested, but eventually he gave a little licking action or two. I did that for awhile and then put Horace on his bed, dimmed the lights in there and headed home. Buh-bye, Muskrat Horace, see ya tomorrow! :)


Day Two

I wondered all night how Horace was hanging. Well, when I danced through the door to my room, he wasn't in the corner. And the room was a lot smellier. Hmm. A short investigation revealed two things:
One- Horace had regained some of his muskrat strength! He'd wandered along the walls of my studio, randomly disturbing smaller things with his huge butt.
Two- Horace had decided that he did enjoy a drink of water thank you, and he would need to pee all over my floor.

Muskrat pee. Whew, lemme tell ya.

So after I clean up all of Horace's accidents, I wrap him in the big towel and sit his giant self on my lap as I work on my painting. La di da... Horace and me, workin' together... Occasionally I put him down so I can dance and paint. Mm-hmm, I do a lot of dancing while I paint. At this point I feel Horace is no longer catatonic, so I put my music back on full blast. Well, quarter blast, for Horace. I play a lot of Gorecki, and turn up the Dawn Upshaw

I now notice that, while still sluggish, he is at least moving himself around, as opposed to being catatonic. I also notice that now whenever I touch him he makes a chattering noise with his mouth/teeth. How adorable! I'm not sure which got his party started, but he seemed to enjoy jamming. Could it have been the Fall Out Boy?

the Black Eyed Peas?

...I did play a lot of Panic! too, though...

I dunno, but Horace seemed to be coming along. He meandered and investigated corners, I danced around my studio with three brushes in my hand and four in my hair and did almost no work whatsoever.
Some time later, for some strange reason, I was hungry. I decide that I'd like to have some snackage as I pretend to paint. I also decide that I don't wanna leave Horace, so I started wrapping him up, swaddling like a newborn babe. I got all the way to putting the car in reverse to back out of the parking lot before I thought that perhaps riding in the car would be traumatizing to Horace, and I wouldn't do it.
So I turned back and left Horace upstairs with Aaliyah and went without him. Poor baby!


Day 3

Horace is meandering slowly but surely around my studio, peeing on my stuff, drinking water and chattering at me when I hold him like a baby on my lap and paint. His big, black eyes look healthier than when I first pulled him out of the mean streets three days prior.
People have stopped by my little room to see what others have told them, with their own eyes. Rachel is babying a giant rat in her studio. My brothers came, saw, and ran away. My sister thinks I'm ridiculous and hilarious. No matter. I love Horace, and he loves me.

Day 4

I decide that Horace may be ready to return to his home. I'd love to keep the funny little guy, but I have no idea how to keep a muskrat. I only have water and no food for him. And I don't have a pond for him to splash in. *sad face*
So, I decided it was time to take Horace home. Where's that exactly? Definitely not the middle of the road.
I assumed that since it was just yards from where I found him, that the kudzu fields was where Horace had wandered from. I put ol' friend in the car and drove back down there and parked on the side of the road. I walked further into the fields, so as not to give him any ideas about wandering toward the road again, and I put Horace on the grass at the kudzu's edge. As soon as his giant webby rat feet touched the grass, he sniffed around. Suddenly Horace acted like he felt much, much better. He sniffed the kudzu in front him, moved forward and disappeared into it. What? Really? Really Horace?? I thought I heard squishing, so parted the leaves to see a small body of water was under all that kudzu! And there was Horace waddling away through the water. He didn't even look back. Not even so much as a thank you.

Oh well. At least he was home free.

Sometime later, I decided that maybe I could see what kind of muskrat Horace was, or what areas they actually inhabitant around here, so the interwebs were my guide.
Something odd though. All the images I found on muskrats. None of them really looked like Horace. Hmm.

FastForward to last year..
I'm working on something and the tv is running in the background, it's on a Discovery show about menacing, non-indigenious pests. I'm not really paying attention but I look up and there on the screen is Horace! A Horace look-a-like. What? Menace? That's ridiculous! Muskrats are adorable rat-like cuties who live in kudzu and get stuck in traffic. How have they menaced? Do tell!
So I start watching and finally understand why Horace didn't really look like the muskrats. Because Horace was not a muskrat. Horace was something called a Coypu aka Nutria Rat.

Me: What the hell is a Nutria Rat???

Here's what some journalist folk have to say about "the Nutria Rat problem":

Large rat-like nutria spreading in Seattle
Posted by The Associated Press June 25, 2008 08:39AM
Categories: Breaking News

SEATTLE — Milder weather may be one reason that a rat-like aquatic rodent called nutria is spreading in the Seattle area.

Residents near the University of Washington would like to get rid of nutria because they are chewing and burrowing through shorelines.

Nutria can weigh up to 20 pounds and be aggressive toward people and spread disease.

Nutria are an invasive species. They were introduced in Washington in the 1930s as a fur animal. They’ve been spotted in wetlands as far north as the Canadian border and east to the Tri-Cities. — The Associated Press

Well. That is interesting. Maybe I should have interpreted Horace's teeth chattering at me every time I picked him up as a sign of aggression. Hmm. No matter. I swaddled and held him like a baby. Deal with it Horace. You're alive and well and out there kicking the shyte outta somebody's shoreline thanks to me!

Here's some more information/bad news about the Nutria Rat:

http://www.southerner.net/v3n1_2002/nutria1.html

http://www.bugspray.com/article/nutria.html

But I think Horace would appreciate this site instead:
http://www.conceitedindependence.com/Nutria.shtml


Well, would you look at that. All the Nutria info out there in the world and I had no idea. Didn't even know, all this time I could have been rocking a Nutria Queen t-shirt for girls:

Here's some artist who ran over one, cartoon drawing of a Nutria Rat

And apparently they enjoy lollipops as well. And some people actually try to enjoy them.

And just because it's awesome and something else that annoys the heck outta people. Creepy Kudzu...

http://www.jjanthony.com/kudzu/houses.html

http://www.science-house.org/kudzu/index.html

Seriously, if you've never seen this stuff go for miles and devour everything in it's path, you're missing out. I mean, what all is living in it?... Who can know... There could be f-ing unicorns living in that stuff....

So now you know everything** about me:

- I like animals.

-I do what I want.

-I'm a terrible painter.

-I find kudzu super interesting.

-I talk to myself, conversationally.

-i almost bundled a giant nutria rat like a baby and pushed it around Walmart in a cart.

-I'm a great procrastinator

-I've still never seen a beaver or muskrat in real life, apparently.

- I like rats and other rodentia.

-I am often completely ridiculous.

** Nah, that's not everything.