When I was studying in France in high school, I would either go to my uncle's house (he was still married to his first wife) or to my grandparents' on the weekends.
I took some money out of my aunt's purse that fall, and, as punishment, had to go to my grandparents' farm every weekend for months on end. My grandmother was manic-depressive, and never what I would call coherent, stable, or healthy, even on her "good" days. My grandfather was an abusive, diabetic, morally-bereft, and emotionally- and psychologically-impaired, alcoholic. These were my father's parents. He was the first in that line of the family to go to college, so I suppose that makes me the second!! He has cousins who did, and other relatives who live in New Jersey, New York, Georgia and Chicago, whose children of my generation have all been to college, being American by now. My cousin, Rachel, who has lived in France all her life, has also gone to college, and even to law school. But, I digress.
During Christmas vacation, I was at the farm. My grandfather had rented out most of the fields, sold all of his cows, and retired. Not that that is relevant at all, but now you know. My uncle would come and go, occasionally working the fields they still farmed, and basically being a menace.
They had a cider apple orchard behind the house, and a cider press and aging barrels in the garage beneath the house. My uncle harvested the apples, intending to make cider, but was too busy drinking to ever do it. So the apples sat there. Cider apples aren't edible, being far too bitter.
Then the rains came, winter in Brittany is much like that of the UK and Ireland, or Washington and Oregon, but sans snow. At some point that winter, there were over 40 days and nights of rain. I counted. No ark came. In light of this appalling lack of divine intervention, to save themselves, the Breton river rats sought higher ground.
The rats that lived along the small river and numerous streams near my grandfather's home must have ALL emigrated to his garage. After all, there was a huge pile of fermenting and rotting apples there - who could resist?! Food and drink in a relatively warm and dry location! I never thought about that aspect of it, not only were they there, satiated and all, but, given the state of fermentation of the apples, they were probably drunken rats, at that!!
I have a tendency to associate with alcoholically-afflicted friends. I realize that tendency and its inherent inability to be a healthy or stabilizing influence in my life. But, for whatever the reason, and I am aware of and understand many of those reasons, I still find those people. And, for better or worse, I cannot get myself to give up on or let go of a certain few of them!! But, I digress, again...
It seems that alcoholic rats were attracted to me, too, although not in the same way, as I did not associate myself with them. I didn't even know they were in there all throughout my vacation.
The house didn't have heat. Except a wood-burning stove in the kitchen and a big fireplace in the other kitchen, that wasn't being used that year. It was cold and raining. I either stayed huddled in bed, or in the kitchen with the wood-burning-stove that whole "vacation," just waiting for school to start back up again.
The Sunday before school started back up, my grandfather took me to the town square to catch the bus back to boarding school. I packed up my things and followed him down to the garage to get into his 1965 Simca car.
I can still clearly see my grandfather driving that car in my mind. He was about 6'2", or at least seemed that tall to me. That was unusual for a Breton, as they tend to be smaller and fairer of skin than the French, and blond, or at least blonder (blond by France's standards is not blond by Minnesota's standards, as the French think I am blond, while the Minnesotans understand that only my sisters are!!). My grandfather looked rather like a cross between Herman and Grandpa Munster, at least I think so. Herman's body and physical grace, or lack thereof, coupled with Grandpa's beauty of the face. He was usually drunk by 10:30 or 11 in the morning, and a very bitter, angry, psychologically abusive man (if not psychotic or sociopathic). He would roll his own cigarettes, stick the cigarette in his mouth, light it, and then leave it sit there until his saliva put it out. He wore a beret, and would drive along, intent upon his route, at 20 or 30 miles an hour, with the wet cigarette hanging there, and a scowl upon his face...
Anyway, I packed my bag that day, happy to be escaping his wrath and my grandmother's fear, passivity and despair, not to mention the cold, and followed him down the stairs to the garage. He opened one of the garage doors, and to my horror, the entire floor of the garage was a living carpet of rats. It was SO gross. The grossest thing I have ever seen. I was scared and horrified and disgusted, and then it got worse. To clear a path to his car, as I backed away from the garage to wait for him to pull the car out, my grandfather shouted at them a little, waved his arms, waved a stick, and then grabbed a tree branch of about 4 or 5 inches in diameter, and started stoically walking to his car, striking rats upon the head, and leaving their twitching corpses in his wake.
Wasn't that a lovely story?!
Rats are the animal I most abhor to this day. My daughter, Morgan likes them, though. They have a class pet who is a rat at school. She (the rat) had ovarian cancer. Her name is Timmy. I don't know why. They raised money and paid for her bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy and hysterectomy themselves. The rat is 2. They live to be about 3. Morgan was very vehement about contributing monies to the "save the rat" campaign, and continuously attempts to get me to touch the thing, much against my better judgment (as far as raising funds to help a rat with her ovarian cancer). She has never been successful in getting me to touch poor Timmy. Fortunately, Timmy is a white rat, an albino, I suppose, and not a big brown/black Breton river rat, so I feel relatively safe in her presence. Albinos always tend to appear weaker than the rest of us, unless you've read "The DaVinci Code."
