Ratso’s Story, by Sue Kelman
My guest blogger is a friend and a wordsmith Sue Kelman:
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Rizzo (Ratso to his friends) was my cage mate. We had a nifty pad at Children’s Hospital — all we could eat with no scrounging, clean beds, quiet surroundings, and plenty of activity to keep us occupied.
Rizzo’s favorite was the maze. Each week he bragged to us about how fast he made it through to the cheese. Larry over in Row-D was always the slowest. All the guys used to razz him about it. No matter how hard he tried, Larry took the wrong turn every time. I think his mother spent some time out at a psych hospital, so maybe they messed with her brain and that affected Larry. Who knows? I suspect that know-it-all visiting researcher from MIT knows what happened to Larry but he’s probably keeping it under his hat until he publishes his results in JAMA. Putz!
Okay, so one day, Rizzo just came back from one of those tests where they make us hit a little button when the red and green lights go on. Personally this is my favorite gig because of course there’s no running around, but Rizzo likes to throw a monkey wrench into the research data. So every now and then, even when he knows how we should respond, he does just the opposite. I told you, he’s one smart rodent.
Rizzo’s pretty famous, too. Oh he’s not as famous as that talking grey parrot that used to be over at Harvard, but he’s been around. For a while he was a top gun — the big performer for a group of genetics guys. He’s had his DNA tested more times than Mike Tyson.
Then they lent him out to Hematology where, I swear, the guy’s already had 15 blood transfusions. No wonder he’s healthy as a horse.
Me, I’m just your average lab rat. I know the drill: wake up, eat a few pellets, perform, eat some more pellets, doze off, and wake up to do it all over again. Not a bad life if you can stay away from those vivisection weirdos. They’re like Dr. Mengele all over again.
I’d tell you more but Rizzo’s gonna tell us about the time he got out of his cage and made it almost all the way to the Starbucks wagon before they caught him. Great story and he’s a real raconteur. None of that Stuart Little crap. We fall over laughing every time we hear it. Gotta go.
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