I just saw the damndest thing...

It must be time for giving birth around here for the kangaroo rats. I don't have a better explanation for why all of a sudden there are rat holes dug everywhere, and sometimes in the damnedest places. High-traffic areas, where no sensible creature the size of a rat should ever build a home.

We've got a lot of kangaroo rats around here. I dunno which variety they are, but I'll go with whichever is the least "endangered," okay? Anyway, a few minutes ago two baby ones were severely endangered. I don't know what their item was, but they might have been scared out by the jeep passing right over their burrow.

I spent some time at M's Dome, then swung by the Lair to perform a little electrical experiment and pick up a couple of things. On getting back to Landlady's property I hung a right to the valvehouse above her new house, because I need to install an electrical outlet in there for a heat-tape. That valvehouse has been a common freeze point every winter since I've lived here, but it didn't really matter before last year and wasn't possible to fix before the year before that, so there wasn't anything to be done. But now there's reason to keep it from freezing and enough electricity to get the job done. So an outlet is called for. I'd already dug a short trench and drilled through the foundation, but I didn't have any wire or tools I needed to re-route some existing wire. Brought those back with me, and set about running wire when I heard a rhythmic squeaking noise I didn't recognize at all. I looked around - nothing. I walked out onto the plaza, and now it sounded like it was coming from where I'd just been. I looked all around, and the sound just didn't seem to have a source.

Finally I looked down, and I was practically standing on the source. Two tiny black-and-white rats were outside a burrow, perfectly still and apparently unafraid of me, except they were both wheezing in unison and that was the sound I'd been hearing. Right at my feet.

I just stood there and stared - I'd never seen anything like it. Suppose I could have and maybe should have killed them, except what's the point? There's millions of them, we only go after the ones that come into our homes, and with Click around the only ones I see indoors are dead so I didn't have anything special against them.

I was just staring at them, when I saw movement at the mouth of the burrow. An adult rat stuck - her, I suppose - head out, looked at me, looked at the babies, and then darted far enough out to grab the nearest one and disappeared back inside. I walked back to where I'd been working to give her a little room. A moment later she came out again and grabbed the other one.

I will never know what that was all about.