Owning rats, or as some say, being owned by rats, is a journey. For me it began with being intensely rat-phobic to where I am now, rat-obsessed (ok, i admit it).
Well, Pez and I took a trip to the outside world yesterday and it was ugly. Ratphobes all around. I came home feeling discouraged and wrote the first 4 stanzas of a poem about people's ignorance.When I showed it to John he gently reminded me that I used to feel that way, too and that centuries of prejudice couldn't be eradicated overnight. That was a wake-up call. There is alot of work to do to educate people, hence the title and the last 4 stanzas.
Ratvocate
by E. McGarvey
dedicated to Pez and Ratty
I think that they will never see
this rat
as lovely as can be.
Her velvet tail and sparkling eyes
are beauties
they don't recognize.
I think that they will ever be
too blind
and ignorant to see
this innocent and trusting soul,
a love
that they will never know.
And yet, I too, was once like them
so full
of fear and ignorance.
One little rat, with bright pink eyes
taught me
my fear was ancient lies.
So I will try and do the same
to clear
the clouds of human blame;
to teach them of this special pleasure,
a rat,
a gift, a moment's treasure.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License. That means you are welcome to keep it or redistribute it as long as you give credit and don't make changes or use commercially.
Labels: poetry/literature, rattie PR
The World Rat Day celebration in San Mateo, CA took place this Sunday and got a nice write-up in the San Jose Mercury.Check out Stephen Bay's pics of last years event.
If you're in the San Francisco/San Jose area, think about checking it out next year around this same time. There's a website with more information at www.thewonderfulworldofrats.org
Labels: rattie PR
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