The Rats Move In – by Karen A Johnson
ISLAND | ONLINE ONLY | AUSTRALIAN NATURE WRITING
Image: Doug Greenberg
A note about me. I no longer describe the earth in terms of the places I will go. I inhabit it differently now. The local environment is my life. Travel is not possible. I don’t mean to another continent, an exotic holiday in another culture, or a binge-crazed couple of weeks aboard a cruise ship. I mean travel to the closest shop or a local bush area to breathe the bushy air.
The earth is no longer a place of free movement. It is walled off into continents and countries. Walled off into counties and communities. Hard borders. Enforced boundaries. Permits for movement. Armies patrolling streets, reminding me not to gather, reminding me to stay safely behind my threshold. According to the politicians, the armed personnel are not in an enforcement role, they are helping. They are keeping me safe.
From my window I see the ocean – the wakes of the ships as they disappear into tiny dots over the horizon. I see lightning; it appears in fluorescent flashes that slice into the darkness. Sometimes, looking south, there is an aurora. A flickering in the sky; a great curtain that may yet be pulled back.
I think about space, squint my eyes, pretend I am orbiting Earth. It’s mostly colour from up here, but I can still see certain features. Ice. Mountains. The texture of ocean currents. I see big cities surrounding parklands. The greenery from this distance looks as if it is being swallowed.
*
When I speak, I realise my language is endangered, jumpy, unused. There is little cause to talk to others and I speak mostly to myself and to Wilbur, my dog; occasionally a neighbour.
Despite being segregated by fences, I feel close to my neighbours. We are caught up in something bigger than us. A shared crisis that brings into view a destiny. We wave to each other more than it is natural to do so. We exchange information; can’t help repeating the things we hear, reinforcing the drama. The media’s grave news coverage tightens our bond. Death and disease have hijacked the world’s narrative, at least until the sheer enormity becomes too overwhelming, and it becomes impossible to concentrate on anything outside of the inside. We beat hasty retreats to our homes and hide away until the next news broadcast. The news has replaced the novel in my world.
This is the time for explorative, dangerous fiction. Apocalyptic fiction. But I’m living in a fiction I can’t find a way to write. Nothing rivals the terror of nonfiction. I go online. I could order a gun, a knife. I don’t. I order a plant. A life.
“This is the time for explorative, dangerous fiction. Apocalyptic fiction. But I’m living in a fiction I can’t find a way to write. Nothing rivals the terror of nonfiction. I go online. I could order a gun, a knife. I don’t. I order a plant. A life.”
I order booze. It is dropped at my front door. I don’t see the delivery people, despite trying to spot them.
In the morning, the sun breaks through the clouds, throwing out a golden light, igniting the trunks of nearby blue gums. In this moment the natural beauty makes me ache.
This is my fourth week at home, and it is the first time I have seen the rat. This is a turn of events – I had begun to think I was imagining it. When I’m alone, it happens. Thoughts become reality and I wander through the day without leaving them. Life becomes a self-perpetuating fiction. But now, I see the rat for what it is; an engineering genius, a home renovations specialist, and an expert in other areas as well.
“But now, I see the rat for what it is; an engineering genius, a home renovations specialist, and an expert in other areas as well.”
*
At first the rat’s presence is indiscernible from background noise, existing as turbulence in the primitive part of my brain. Impossible to tell if it occurs within or without. It is like an intermittent ringing in the ears, or perhaps the tweeting of birds. But then there is the obvious and undeniable scratching. Wilbur sits up, cocking her head. I listen, trying to pinpoint a location.
Already, I have unknowingly observed the rat’s runway along the fence, leading from the compost bin. This must have been its home for a long time; its labyrinthine colonisation of my garden only now dawning on me. It has many paths, stretching to all points of the compass, and a raiding route that runs under the fence and into my neighbour’s chook shed. Eggs are a favourite food of rats.
I almost get a photo but fumble my phone, missing even its tail as it extends behind it. But I now know it is an attractive creature with a luxurious grey-brown coat. A hairdresser would call it ash-brown. Its long whiskers give it a refined air. They are its best feature.
*
I make a checklist. Supplies. Haves. Have nots. Improvised meals with dwindling ingredients. The challenge of the everyday. It makes me remember coming home after a three-week stint in the far south-west, kayaking in Port Davey. Ocean. Buttongrass moorland. Mountains. My body tired, yet refreshed every morning. An excitement always simmering. Then, coming home up the Channel. Leaving the remoteness, the wild. Closing in on suburbia.
‘Toilet paper,’ someone exclaims as we come into phone range.
My mind gets no traction on this. It is altogether too far away from my life. Too absurd. But for a moment I’m caught wondering. What will I fight for? I’m unsure, but I know it won’t be toilet paper.
I resign myself to needing to grow more of my own produce.
*
A note about my garden. I see it every day. I am more aware of it now than I have ever been. More aware of how neglected it is. I am making discoveries. A callistemon beneath the banana passionfruit; spring-flowering wattles that attract the tiny eastern spinebill. The spinebill’s dapper little body reminiscent of a brown-orange-white ’70s suit. Its behaviour, hummingbird-like. Agile, it buzzes its body through every plane when visiting a flower. A gymnast in flight, its behaviour contrasts with the yellow-throated honeyeater. The honeyeater thwumps down, perching on a branch that rides up and down with its weight. From this position it leans uncannily, jabbing its beak at any flower within reach. I try not to think too many big thoughts. Day-to-day tasks are what I do. I focus. Pay attention to the detail.
“I try not to think too many big thoughts. Day-to-day tasks are what I do. I focus. Pay attention to the detail.”
Wilbur gives an alarm bark and I go to her. She is pointing her nose, her body in a direction. I peer, not seeing; she glances at me. Barks again. There is a blue-tongue lizard. She doesn’t get too close to it, and I look at her, wondering what she expects me to do. The lizard watches us, its eyelids moving up from the bottom of its bulgy eyes, closing once in a while. Each lid operating independently of the other, so that it appears to be slowly winking. I see its scaly body as a glimpse of prehistory.
I imagine myself as a tiny human; the lizard is a dinosaur. I hide behind a rock but it senses me. Tracks me. Slowly. Persistently. I hear the grinding of its jaw. Then, out of nowhere— the lizard’s bright blue tongue.
Wilbur and I watch until it ambles into the long grass at the border of the property and out of sight. Wilbur scratches her ear. I tilt my head. We potter off into our own worlds.
*
At dusk, I see a ringtail possum cross the street on an overhead wire. Holding. Wobbling. Running. It is surprisingly small. The white tip of its tail twitches about as it maintains balance.
There are pademelons and wallabies in the street. In the absence of cars, they have become comfortable. They hang out. Loiter. Unconcerned. Unafraid. The bitumen has succumbed to weeds. Nature is quick. A crack in a surface is all it needs. Even less, an imperfection. A slight rise. A minor depression. Nature is reclaiming the world. It has resisted the human colonisation of the planet. It has outwaited us.
The latest carbon dioxide figures show the planet taking a breath. Like the callistemon released from the grip of banana passionfruit, we will have to see what happens next.
“The latest carbon dioxide figures show the planet taking a breath. Like the callistemon released from the grip of banana passionfruit, we will have to see what happens next.”
*
The rat spends the evening rummaging inside the walls and roof cavity. It is busy. Wilbur and I pad pointedly about the house following its movements. At one spot Wilbur presses her nose against the wall and snort-sniffs. I press my ear to the plaster. After a while we both lose interest and head off in different directions.
*
During the night, something clatters off the bench in the kitchen and Wilbur barks, scuffling out to investigate. Groggy, I stumble out after her. There is a glass on the floor. Fortunately, it hasn’t broken. I put it in the sink so that I remember to wash it. One of the bananas in the fruit bowl has a hole in it. I throw it in the bin and put the rest of the fruit in the fridge.
I pour myself a cup of water, go to the window, and stare out at the night.
*
A note about the moon. I sit in the dark, my feet on a chair, staring out at it. It is large tonight. Its moonshine makes a highway, hovering on the ocean’s surface. But the more I stare at the moon, the older it seems. It is showing its age and I wonder about its travels. Its life. If I concentrate, I can see its imperfections. A greying of its surface here, a divot there. It goes on, becoming less and less of itself.
“But the more I stare at the moon, the older it seems. It is showing its age and I wonder about its travels. Its life. If I concentrate, I can see its imperfections. A greying of its surface here, a divot there. It goes on, becoming less and less of itself.”
*
The rat laughed. I swear I heard it laugh. Wilbur did too. She looked at me, her eyes saying Did you hear that?
Is it even possible for a rat to laugh? Maybe it was a cough. No, it was definitely a laugh, but a spine-chilling one. Something altogether disconcerting.
Wilbur and I sit close together on the couch. We watch it foraging; every so often we look at each other. It knows we are here; it doesn’t care, just goes about its business.
‘Ninety-seven,’ I say to Wilbur, and she puts her ears back.
I don’t know where I heard it; it is the percentage of DNA that humans share with rats. But in this moment I feel anything but close to it. Its eyes are deep black and bulging. Like if you squeezed it a little too hard they might pop right out of its face.
Wilbur moves and I jump. The sun is streaming through the window.
*
A note about the sun. I follow Wilbur about the house; she is a sun-worshipper. She is a sun-psychic, knows ahead of time where it will be. Which chair. Which patch of floor. But I am learning – we exchange a glance and rush at the spot. She is there first. But I am a bossy housemate.
‘Monkey wins,’ I say, pushing her aside.
Sitting in the warmth, I ignore the whites of her eyes. We have, on occasion, tried to share a chair or squeeze onto the best patch of carpet but we are both intolerant of compromise.
‘What are you doing sitting over there?’ I ask her.
Then the sun comes out from behind a cloud and she is basking. She looks at me. Can a dog smile? I think I see her smile.
*
The rats are building something.
While I’m watching TV, the rats are busy. It is confirmed. There is more than one. There is the ash-brown one. The first one. But there is also one with blonde highlights. I see it skitter across the kitchen floor.
I can no longer watch home improvement shows; the rats scrape and bang behind the boards of the house that used to be mine.
“I can no longer watch home improvement shows; the rats scrape and bang behind the boards of the house that used to be mine.”
I see a chocolate-brown rat. A smaller one. There is a squeaking coming from the walls. It never stops.
I suggest to Wilbur, by pointing, that she do something. She glances at me over her shoulder as she exits the house through her dog door.
*
I no longer discuss the world with my neighbours. We have entered a silent pact. But we still wave, from behind our fences and our windows.
The view from my window transfixes me, consumes my daylight hours. I have to force myself away from it to go and eat. I can’t face housework or jobs in the garden. I can’t face my inner world. The constriction of place.
The trees outside my window are thriving. They are tangling and intertwining with the fabric of my house, becoming one with it in the landscape.
The rats inhabit my kitchen and I must search for things they haven’t bitten. They are brash, appearing next to me when I try to gather a meal. My home is their home.
“The rats inhabit my kitchen and I must search for things they haven’t bitten. They are brash, appearing next to me when I try to gather a meal. My home is their home.”
I cannot bring myself to remove them. Without them, without Wilbur, it would just be me in the house. Rattling around, as my mind does in my skull.
Perhaps Wilbur feels the same. She does nothing about the rats, just skirts them in a wide arc. We have become housemates. Tolerating each other’s presence and less desirable habits.
But the rats are crossing boundaries. They are freeloaders. They do not respect whose food is whose. They eat through the bottom of Wilbur’s food bag. Wilbur is not impressed and races to eat the kibbles that spill forth before the rats can. She then slurps a whole bowl of water.
Wilbur lies or wanders about. She has bloat.
The rats eat anything they want. They have inappropriate toileting behaviours, leaving cylindrical scats throughout the kitchen.
All we can do is hold on. ▼
This work is part of our Australian Nature Writing Project suite
If you liked this piece, please share it. And please consider donating or subscribing so that we can keep supporting writers and artists.