The sound the rat made was horrible and will stay with me. I could hear it frantically dragging the wretched trap around the cupboard, desperately trying to escape the nightmare it was now faced with. I contacted Ratman but he’d clearly knuckled down for the night. I contacted the surveyor, he too did not reply. I just wanted them to come and take the problem away from me. It was of course clear I would have to execute the beast myself. Ratman had betrayed me big style with his wicked contraptions, and left me with no choice, as no person with a conscience could endure the thought of the creature suffering with a crippled leg for any significant length of time.

The most pertinent question becomes ‘what should I use?’ I sought advice from friends and family in a video call. A frying pan soon became the favourite option, which would likely finish him quickly after two or three strong blows, leaving ungodly rat splat everywhere. I realised I was packing two axes in my cupboard which would have no difficulty dispatching him. But the mess would be the same, and what would I do with the head of a rat? fling it into the bushes like an apple core? Oh this was all unthinkable.

I knocked on the neighbours door and asked for a shovel, and she kindly obliged. I explained my predicament and she wished me luck. With this I could generate more power than a cooking pan. I went upstairs to regroup, sitting on the sofa. I resumed a Whatsapp conversation with the lady below, who said she would be back soon to help out. She was taking too long. I decided on the axe.

I went to the cuboard, and there was confronted with Rattus again, before my very eyes. Oh Rattus, I had not intended our meeting to be like this. I flung a towel over him and dropped him into an Asda basket, the trap still attatched to its leg. I removed the towel and put it to his side, and he began to climb up the wall of the basket. I reacted quickly, and he dropped back in. I shoved the towel back over him, grabbed the basket with one hand and mighty axe in the other and walked down the flight of stairs. I stood on the porch, and took another moment. This is where you have to be a man. You must just do it, without thinking about it. Like when you downed shots of gin in the upper rooms of David Wilson half-built houseswhen you were fifteen. It is not nice but it is soon over.

Rattus moved little with the towel over him. It was like he’d given up and realised this was the end. Now for the key development. I removed the trap from the rat’s leg through the towel. Why? Because it would relieve the pain? Because the trap would obstruct the fatal-stroke? Or because I had not the heart? But I did it, and then as I went to grab my weapon, a head peered out of the towel’s hem and yes, for a second I watched as the rat climbed out of the Asda basket. Before I knew it, he was hobbling, three legged, under the neighbours car and into the night. And no sight in my thirty one years of living on the surface of this earth has ever struck me with such pathos.

The axe, shovel and frying pan would be clean tonight, I thought. The lady below later turned up and I told her what had happened. I felt an overwhelming sense of guilt that I had betrayed the animal, but also a glimmer that he might have survived the crippling injury and found his way in the world. If I found him though, knowing how I felt now, I would get the job done. We searched all around the drive, under the cars and in the bushes and found nothing.

The ever resilient Rattus the Great

is now free to live or die on the streets,

and only God will decide his fate.

Rattus has been gone for weeks now, and I must confess, at times I have felt quite lonely. If he was to make the greatest come back of all time and somehow reappear in my kitchen, I would say ‘fair play’ my old friend, ‘fair play,’ and look after him for the rest of his life.