Part Ten

In Which I See A Puppet Show And Behave Like A Ninny Around Dead Things


The rat lay on its side, kitten-sized and still, with a fly licking at its open black eye, just inside the front gate of the house. [A gift from one of the neighborhood's many ugly cats, no doubt.] It was too big and the path was too narrow... leaving the house would mean either moving this thing -I doubled over and made an exaggerated wretching sound at the thought- or stepping over it. (And give the fly a chance to shoot up my pant leg and introduce whatever disease-y bounties he's just sucked off of ratus mortus' eyeball to my nether parts? I think not.)

I knew it would have to be moved. Still, I paced back and forth for a while, laughing nervously in between long, womanish moans. Rats and dead things out in the world are A Fact and I've certainly seen my share since coming here. Call me old-fashioned, but rats at home is still really not OK with me.

I searched the house and soon found an appropriate tool: an old pink mop handle in the kitchen closet. Upon returning to the front porch I experience a brief pang of disappointment that the thing hadn't magically disappeared during the minute I was away. After another brief psyche-up [in which I reminded myself that this sort of business is my job since I am quite literally the Man Of The House] I was ready to approach the... obstacle.

With the mop handle held out as far from my body as possible, I poked gingerly at the rat. Its body was already completely stiff and it rocked onto its side like it was made of papier-mache. With this confirmation that the thing was not squishy or somehow still alive, I drew the mop handle back like a pathetic pink hockey stick and swung, knocking the rat about 18 inches to the right.

Just far enough! Plenty of room! Mission accomplished!

I found an out-of-the-way place near the porch for the mop handle (No no, I don’t think we’ll be having that item back in the house. Burn it! Send it to Hell!) and continued on my way to school. Upon returning home that afternoon I found the rat was gone. We later deduced that Bibi (the landlady’s housekeeper next door who tidies up out front and waters the plants) had probably dealt with it properly.

That evening –as is her custom from time to time- Bibi brought over some treats for us. Cooked bananas and these little tubes of rice wrapped in banana leaves with a ground meat center. No one was crass enough to suggest that the meat filling might have been rodent-based, but the question did come up as we sat munching on the treats: “Do you think Bibi picked the rat up with her bare hands?”

The following photos are from the most recent Paper Moon [local puppet company featuring Carla From Mexico as puppeteer and Carla From Australia as music supervisor] production, (A Short Journey). Colorful strangers meet on a train…

When everyone falls asleep, the Skeleton (a life-sized version of the Horny Skeleton from their previous show) steals some stuff and runs away. When they wake and find their things are gone, the Beggar character (Carla) reveals her Sherlock Holmes hat and magnifying glass and begins to investigate the crime. They eventually catch the Skeleton, he returns their belongings, and Yolanda –the woman in yellow- gives birth:

When we first see Yolanda in her house she is admiring a photo of her sweetheart, the cop on horseback. He re-appears just as she gives birth (on the floor of a train station?).

Note the photos of the birth scene: Yolanda gives birth to a fetus seated atop a slimy little fetus horse. The kids in the audience seem oblivious to the troubling questions this raises about dual paternity.

Meanwhile, Christmas is now just days away. Average temperatures here are still in the 80s and things don’t feel the way they should at the end of a year. Maybe having seasons to help mark the passage of time is more important than I had thought… If Summer 2008 continues for another seven months like some hellish tropical time warp, I will be sweaty and annoyed. As it is, I’m nearly finished with the project that was supposed to be a late gift from Christmas 2007. [Sorry again, folks! I’ll make sure it’s ‘worth it’, I swear!]