The Day I Cooked A Rat

When I first moved away from home, I didn't move very far away. Just next door in fact, to a trailer owned by my grandfather, located in a cow pasture under a stand of pecan trees. The trailer had seen better days. It had grungy carpet in the living area and in my bedroom, and the bathroom was outright scary. The only saving grace about this trailer was that it had a beautiful old Merritt & O'Keeffe stove in the kitchen, with a grill in the middle of the burners.

I lived there with a roommate, who was also my best friend from high school and two cats named Mousel and Gremmie. My friend and I were both attending classes at what was then East Texas State University and is now Texas A&M - Commerce. I was a music history major and she was also a music student, in performance. She would go on to switch to kinesiology. She was also a harpist and her 100+ year old harp stood in the living area. I worked second shift (2pm - 11pm, with overtime usually) at a cracker factory, a job I absolutely loathed.

One day in the middle of winter, a blanket of snow was glistening outside, a rarity in east Texas. I was planning to cook myself something warm for lunch so I wouldn't have to drive anywhere for fast food. I was already dreading the drive in to work that afternoon in the snow and ice.

I turned on the oven and opened up the fridge, looking for the ingredients I had purchased for my home-cooked lunch. Maybe there would be some left over for my supper and for my roommate too, who was in class at the time. As I was chopping veggies and getting my things in order, a terrible stench started to permeate the trailer. At first, I couldn't tell where the smell was coming from, so I stalked back and forth through the trailer, sniffing madly, until I realized that the horrible odor was issuing from the stove. I turned it off and started opening windows, letting out all the heat and letting in the ice-cold air from outside. I was fanning furiously and gagging all the while.

Just then, my roommate comes home from class and asks what the hell is going on? She starts griping that her room smells like whatever is ponging up the trailer and what did I do? Not what I meant to do, apparently.....

When the trailer aired out and the stove was cool again, we shut all the windows and got the heater started again. I lifted up the top of the stove and there in the corner was a small dried up little rat lodged in a hole in the wall of the stove.

Since then, I've taught myself how to cook and I've cooked things that smelled terrible and tasted even worse, but never anything that smelled as bad as that rat. Food Network is good for something, I've found. I do wish I still had that old stove. Cleaned out, of course.....