by Nymarya » Thu Sep 15, 2005 3:15 pm
This sounds like a black-comic end-of-the-world book by Gore ("Kalki") Vidal or Kurt ("Cat's Cradle") Vonnegut...end of civilization due to a mouse.<br><br>Ever since I read "The Hot Zone" I think it was, where the monkeys got loose who MIGHT have had Ebola...and worked in a facility that had in fact been a Level IV containment area where everyone was always sick, even young healthy kids who worked out all the time...and where we joked about the Ebola monkey who was still lurking at the back of the parking lot...I've been waiting for something like this.<br><br>I worked in a university med school lab and a lab rat who was critical to someone's study--they needed this little fella for their grant and everything--got loose. He wasn't infected with anything, they had been experimenting with inducing sores to study topical medications on his skin. The researchers went to every office looking for him and telling people to call ASAP if they glimpsed him. I said "Sure" and prayed that he would come to me and I could save him, name him Templeton (after the rat in "Stuart Little"), take him home and let his wounds heal and then find him a good home (rats are very smart and affectionate pets, but I had cats.) As far as I know he was never found, I hope he got outside and made some kind of rat-life for himself.<br><br>This med school, by the way, had an underground unmarked animal experimentation facility beneath the parking lot that you entered via a Get-Smart/Man from UNCLE elevator, the doors were locked and bullet proof and you needed a pass to get in. One of the secretaries told me once she had to deliver something there and the cries of animals made HER cry; the next time she had to go she asked me to go with her as moral support, so I saw this for myself. That time we didn't go in, someone came out and got the envelope she had. I asked her if she knew why the secrecy, she said they were afraid of being picketed by PETA. Right. I no longer work there but when I visit hospital patients there I look at that innocent looking parking lot and it creeps me out wondering what they are actually doing down there.<br><br>Some days I just feel humans are so vile, I wish for a pestilence that would kill only us and leave the animals and the rest of nature to regenerate itself without our depredations. You go, plague rat.<br><br>The Fourteenth Book of Bokonon:<br><br>Title: What Can a Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind on Earth, Given the Experience of the Past Million Years?<br><br>Only verse: Nothing.<br><br>~Kurt Vonnegut, "Cat's Cradle" <p>=======<br>Oh, I enjoy an egg myself, yes. They don't make good pets, though; you can never get them in at night. <br> ~Doctor Pratt (played by Peter Sellers), "The Wrong Box"</p><i></i>
