B Flat

1:11am. I was rudely jolted awake in the midst of my peaceful slumbers by our dog, Bwenzi, barking and growling like fury in the backyard.

I grabbed my superbright military grade fully anodized aluminum flashlight and shone it out to where I could see him. Something small and dark was zipping around and darting at him while he growled and barked in circles on the lawn. I put boots on, to protect my feet from whatever creature it was, and walked over there with my light on its brightest setting.

Oh help, it’s a rat. Or at least I think it is. I go in and get some gloves and another bright flashlight so I can light things up even more. I snuck up behind it and shone both lights on it. I don’t know if it was my presence or the lights, but Bwenzi got very brave and jumped on it and grabbed it and shook it and squished it and it was dead. Quite dead. Dead as a doornail, like Jacob Marley.

Alberta is notoriously rat-free, so we get to googling and trying to self-identify the rat, wondering if we needed to contact the Alberta Rat Control something-or-other. With it dead I could get a better view of its feet, and comparing to some pictures we were relieved to find it was only a lowly muskrat.

The fiber-optic internet people have been drilling all over town to install a supposedly much faster internet service for everyone here. As several locals have said, we’ll believe it when we see it, as they’ve promised faster internet for years and it’s still unreliable. Be nice if it was city speeds. Slow/unreliable internet is one of the benefits/downsides to living in a remote community. One benefit is you can’t keep up as well with the world drama and other detrimental media. That can also be a downside.

Anyway, we got to wondering if the drilling and hydrovaccing scared the little muskrat up from the pond down the street and he briefly found refuge in our backyard before being set upon by a big, loud roaring beast that bit him and made him go very dead. Needless to say, it was an eventful night.