It happened in the midlle of the day this time. Bembo, one of my cats, caught in the garden a young rat the size of a mouse and brought him into the house. The rat was still alive. Unlike some other of my cats that eat rats and mice, Bembo usually treats its prey like a living toy or an involuntary playmate.
Since I was getting a bit tired of rescuing rats from the cats inside the house and then chasing them out of the house, I chased Bembo out while the young rat was still in his mouth. Bembo was holding the rat more or less like a mother cat would hold a kitten.
So the rat was alive but these kinds of games can suddenly turn deadly so I was hoping for an opportunity to bring him somewhere safe. Because... yeah, I like rats. Mice too. I like all kinds of pests even if it is against my interest.
At one point Bembo released the rat and the rat climbed on the low fence around the part of the yard in which the gas reservoir for heating the house is situated. Bembo was ready to strike again when I put my hand in front of the rat that soon climbed my arm ...
... and found a safe place on the top of my head. With the little rat on me, I decided to walk to the tool shed on the opposite side of the yard becouse that looked like a good place for a rat to hide, recover from this crisis, and continue its existence.
With the rat on my shoulder, near my ear, I felt like the Djinn from the 1940 movie The Thief of Bagdad
I adored that old movie when I was a kid and is still among my top Fantasy/Adventure movies of all time.
Abu, the young protagonist of the movie was small like this rat on the shoulder of the Djinn which came out of the bottle that was lying on some beautiful deserted beach, if I remember correctly.
I imagine the rat feeling the same sense of wonder while being transported by a giant. The only difference is that the Djinn could fly, I can't.
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When we reached the safe destination, I crouched and the rat jumped on one of the shelves in the semi-open tool shed that hosts various gardening-related stuff and offers some nice hideouts for small animals.
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Here you can see Bembo watching the rat on the top of my head and wondering how the world can turn upside down & crazy so quickly.
And that's it. Hope you enjoyed this little true story from my yard. It all happened only a couple of hours ago. It's still fresh like the news reports one can see on the TV.
The photographs in which you can see me and the rat were taken by a friend who was there with me. I photographed the last shot. The one in which Bembo is watching the observer.
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