Rat Kin

Yesterday at work, my colleagues and I witnessed a captivating drama unfolding. During a minor mechanical breakdown, some of us wandered over to the railing along the front edge of our second-floor balcony, from which we had a view of the plant’s main floor below us. We were hoping to get a clue as to the nature and duration of the delay. Our line boss Punkin has a radio, but communications arrive that way only about half the time. Often it becomes a matter of watching what guys in the distance are doing, or receiving long-distance hand signals.

Anyway, we had a view down onto the main floor conveyor belt, on which loads of trash were being carried along the gallery and up a slope to the pinnacle, about twenty feet in the air, at which point the trash was going over the falls and was lost to our sight, like the Moldau River.

And we quickly noticed that a large rat was on the belt, apparently foraging for food among the cans and containers. It was harrowing to watch him, because again and again, he was transported right up to the precipice, where the belt’s contents spilled toward an unknown fate. (I’ve never investigated where stuff goes when it passes beyond our reach . . . though I once proposed the theory to a fellow temp that it goes into a hopper from which a payloader brings it around back to the beginning of the Greenstar pipeline, and that which was becomes that which is — there is no new thing under the sun.) But whether the rat would have plummeted into grinding, compacting machinery or not, at the very least, if he’d gone over the edge, he would have had a long fall.

The belt, about six feet wide, is transected every eight feet or so by a vertical barrier about six inches high. These bafflers keep objects from sliding backward down the belt when it climbs. They were also just high enough that the rat would dash up to one and think, it seemed, that he could go no farther . . . and he’d make a U-turn and dart straight back up toward the brink of possible annihilation.

But it became clear that the rat also had acute perception and amazing reflexes. When he’d find himself right at the top, where the world fell away, he would scamper back down again, hopping over the baffling walls, poking his sharp nose into more soup tins and pizza boxes — left, right, diagonal . . . up the belt, down the belt. Three or four times, his human audience was sure he was a goner, and a collective cry went up. But each time, the rat re-emerged from the vanishing garbage and raced back downward.

Most of the guys seemed greatly amused by the rat’s antics and predicament, but I was terrified for the rat. I wanted him to leap off the belt at the floor level and find safety among the deep, undisturbed warrens. I felt a kinship with him. He seemed to be illustrating our human condition, especially we who work in places such as recycling plants.

We forage; we follow our senses; we scuttle here and there in search of small opportunities. But the inexorable forces of the world pull us higher, higher, toward the great fall into the dark. Bills . . . taxes . . . the passing of time . . . the mortality of our cars and our bodies . . . the horrible white winter, which already has its fangs sunk deep into October . . . To stand still is to succumb. So we do the rat dance, scurrying and scurrying. Fortunately, we are not without help. The machines themselves may be passionless and impartial, but I believe in the Hand that set the machines in motion, and can stop them at any time. It is a Hand of kindness and power.

After a time, our engines started again, the paper belts moved, and no one saw what became of the rat. Judging by his escapades, I’d say there’s quite a fair chance that he lived to forage another day, for he seemed to be a master of the belt, not ignorant of its workings — this is his world, where belts move and engines growl, where cats lurk and men point at rats and say, “There goes your man!”

These thoughts remind me of one of my favorite scenes in all of cinema. It’s in the old movie The River,ย starring Mel Gibson and Sissy Spacek. Nice soundtrack, too! Anyway, the main characters are farmers who struggle to survive along the banks of a river that brings life to their crops, but can also bring destruction. In a particularly bad year, when the crops fail, Mel Gibson and many others like him are forced to find any work they can. He signs on with several truckloads of “scabs” — strike-breakers, who are brought into factories at which the regular employees are on strike, trying to get better conditions from the owners. Naturally, these scabs are extremely unpopular with the regular workers, who throw things at them, rattle the chain-link fences, and shout obscenities — “You’re taking our jobs!”

So, under terrible conditions, the scabs go to work, and the factory keeps running. One day, in the sleepless, infernal darkness of the steel mill, the men notice that a wild deer has somehow wandered in from the sparse woodland outside. Lost, disoriented, the deer stumbles through the labyrinth of gears and belts, its panic increasing.

Excited, the men shout, “Let’s get it!” They deploy themselves, their hunter instincts taking over. They surround the deer, cutting off its retreat. Finally, the animal stands trapped within a ring of sweaty, hungry, tired, sad, desperate, unshaven men. There is no escape. The deer stares at the men; the men stare at the deer. The creature is so terrified that its bladder lets go.

No one says a word, but somehow, in that moment of witnessing the deer’s terror, the men see themselves reflected in its eyes. They, too, are surrounded by a sea of hostiles. They, too, only want to live. They, too, are in need of mercy and miracles.

Acting in unison, the men slowly move their circle, keeping it intact, herding the deer along in their midst. They thread through the maze of smoke and furnaces to the open bay door of the factory. There, they open the circle and allow the deer to run back into the forest.

We live in a world of darkness, but it is not an abandoned world. When the fulness of time had come, God sent a Savior. So, too, He orders our paths and opens the circle at the right time, delivering us from our rat dance, restoring us to the green woods.

As the autumn deepens, let us remember mercy: that which we receive, and which we may in turn give.

25 Responses to Rat Kin

  1. Hagiograph says:

    Well, OK, I guess it’s my job. So here goes.

    What if the world is really just the belt. The machinery that run the belt has no interest in or even actual “knowledge” of the rat. The rat has survived not by “mercy” or kindness from the belt, but through hard scrabble experience of climbing the belt day in and day out for scraps of food dried in the bottom of tin cans.

    One day the rat will slip. The belt will move on as if the rat were nothing more than another tin can. And the rat will go over the falls.

    Is this “dark”? No, the rat does his thing for as long as he can. The machinery growls on unheeding.

  2. Hagiograph says:

    Further to “salvation”. I am of the opinion that we _are_ all fallen creatures in need of salvation but technically undeserving of it.

    Only difference is, I think it is from the hands of our fellow people that we derive this. We accept people for who they are, no strings attached and grant to them the “grace” of community.

    And when we fail at this we are showing our fallen nature and why none of us _deserve_ this grace.

    So do we warn each other of the upcoming falls and where the best tin is? Share our scrap of dried food as we inexorably ride up to the top of the trash heap and the event horizon beyond which no other rat has ever returned?

    Is there a glorious “after belt” waiting for us over the horizon? No one knows.

  3. Dammit Chris, I was going to say something like this: “I would have wanted to have a .22 there and take shots at him. Rats are vermin and need slaying by the billions” and then you go and change the whole nature of the discussion.
    Rats!

    • Hagiograph says:

      Bwahahaha! Yes, I am decidedly “Pro-Rat”. Anything that is an alarmingly intelligent disease vector I’m all for it! In fact it is the basis of my political and moral philosophy!

      Apparently you are some sort of Rat Genocide guy! Don’t worry, your fate will be one of great agony as I and my rat armies descend upon the Midwest.

      Yes I will marshall a giant fighting force (who only occasionally have to check the garbage cans for food) and we will destroy you.

      You will suffer at our tiny, tiny creepy little hands….

      Not ROOM 101!!!! Noooooooo!

      • Morwenna says:

        Hagio, the rats are not following you to join your army. They want to ask questions about their doctoral dissertations.

        • Hagiograph says:

          And the obvious answer to all their questions can be found in the annihilation of Brown Snowflake! HE! HE has hoarded all the information! My rat children, you stand here today denied access to the articles you need to complete your dissertation. WHO? WHO has checked out all the copies of the journals? Why NONE OTHER THAN BROWN SNOWFLAKE! We will go and we will forcibly remove them from him!

          And our vengeance will be horrid.

          (See, I’m a leader among rats.)

  4. fsdthreshold says:

    Mr. Brown — In the third Indiana Jones movie, there’s a humorous moment when he glances down a tunnel, his face falls, and he mutters, “Rats.” Then he’s being pursued by a multitude of rats that completely obscure the floor in their hordes. (I think I’m describing the scene right; forgive me if I’m wrong.) Marquee Movies and I always laugh about how, in the Japanese translation in the subtitles, the word “Rats” becomes “Look!”, so the pun is entirely lost. Because “Rats!” in Japanese would mean only the animals. It doesn’t convey frustration.

    Another funny Japanese subtitle inadequacy is in LOTR, when Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli are pursuing the Uruk-hai who have Merry and Pippin, and Aragorn picks up the leaf-pin from the Lorien cloak that Merry deliberately dropped. In the movie, Aragorn says, “Not lightly do the leaves of Lorien fall,” which is beautiful and poetic. In the subtitle, he says, “One of the hobbits must have dropped this!” [Palm smacks forehead. Way to take all the poetry out of the line! But I can see how, if the line were translated accurately, the audience in Japan would go, “Huh?”]

    Anyway . . . way to do your job, Hagio! You were right there with the Lovecraftian perspective: the universe is an infinite, impersonal machine, and we’re bugs who are lucky if we go awhile before we get squashed. ๐Ÿ™‚ But I’m really curious about your explanation. You say we “are fallen creatures in need of salvation.” How is this possible without a God? Fallen from what? In need of salvation from what?

    • Hagiograph says:

      How can we be “fallen” without a God? That is a rather easy question to answer! Only if one assumes that “morality” and “ethics” necessitate a God does it become a problem.

      We are “fallen” because we are given over to selfishness when we are social creatures. We are capable of great love and great good and immense, unspeakable evil.

      Every one of us is as capable of harming others as we are of lending a helping hand.

      It is human nature.

      Instead of the rat on the conveyor belt let’s put a more social creature, like a group of people. They can and in many cases will help each other out. They will warn each other of the danger of the incipient falls. They will grab dried pieces of trash to eat and give to people as they urge everyone to run down away from the horizon.

      But sometimes they will push a weaker person down so they can climb back down to safety at a lower level on the conveyor or they will hoard their precious tin of dried bean smudge and share it with no one.

      Meanwhile everyone is ultimately going over the falls to some unknown fate never to return.

      You must realize I’m a Utilitarian but recognize in us Bentham’s hedonistic calculus at work. I’m of a dual mind but mostly around what we should do and what we often do.

      In no case is there a need for supernatural items to play a role.

  5. Haggio: Are you referring to the articles I shipped to Tim in Germany last month? I figured rats cannot swim, and if they stowaway at least they will end up in Deutscheland (where they can feel free to form the Ratzi party) and not here.

  6. Buurenaar says:

    It has to be said: “Humans need fantasy to be human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.” –Terry Pratchett

    All this existentialism makes me want to reread Good Omens.

    Also, coming directly out of my linguistics class, the need to analyze etymology of all terms in German is overwhelming…as is the need to compare the common Modern English to its roots….gorram it.

    • fsdthreshold says:

      Ha, ha! A little bit of Joss Whedon there? ๐Ÿ™‚

      Speaking of linguistics and German . . . not long ago, a friend said there should be a word for “the fear of being left alone with a teething child.” Another friend said, “It would probably be a German word.” So I came up with:

      Kindzahneauftauchenalleineangst.

      Tim? Does that work? I have to take the blame for it; it’s probably not how a native speaker would do it — but it sure sounds good when you say it in a dry, flat, ennui-laden tone, preferably with your head tilted back and your eyes half-closed. It is designed to mean:

      “Child-teeth appearing alone terror.”

      • Tim in Germany says:

        The most likely German response to being left alone with a teething child would be “Katastroph!” This is the all-purpose expression, covering everything from the death of a loved one to a paper cut. Talk about German efficiency.

        If we’re really looking to make one of those famous German compound words, we’ve got to take advantage of the fact that one term for teething is Kinderkrankheit. So, a teething child becomes a kinderkrankheitenes Kind.

        I’d suggest “Kinderkrankheiteinsamkeit” as a lovely little word for fear of being alone with a teething child. Now stop making fun of the Muttersprache before I get started on English spelling.

        • Buurenaar says:

          Don’t start on English spelling, or I’ll have to pull out the linguistic family tree and explain how a lot of the quirks in English spelling is due to German descent, from the Great Vowel and Consonant Shifts. I just got out of Linguistics again, so I’ve got the material fresh in my mind. ๐Ÿ˜‰

  7. Buurenaar says:

    The line of Language Evolution (for English) goes like this: Proto Indo-European, Germanic, West Germanic, English. The Romance languages descend from Latin, which is a descendant of Italic, which is also from Proto Indo-European. (PIE) Mmmmm….pie…

    • Buurenaar says:

      Source is The Family Tree and Wave Models from the Ohio State University Language Files, as compiled in Language: Introductory Readings by Clark, Eschholz, Rosa, and Simon. (7th Edition, page 327) Barnette would probably be laughing his doctoral glutes off if he knew I was posting this. ๐Ÿ™‚

  8. Buurenaar says:

    The world goes a bit crazy in October. I think that’s why I like it so much…pardon while I go take a little dip in the River Abandon….

  9. jhagman says:

    Is Herr Durbin underwater? It looks like PA is being hit by this nasty storm! I hope everything is ok. This Halloween I am reading Sax Rohmer and HP Lovecraft (in the LIAM edition), for food it is suadero tacos, relleno burritos, and to drink Sierra Nevada IPA (eat your heart out Snowflake). It is very dry here in the Antelope Valley- but I do not want to get too proud, the San Andreas is 7 miles away!

    • fsdthreshold says:

      Hello, jhagman and everyone! I’m still here, trying to figure out how many layers to wear to work today. My apartment feels warmer and the outdoors sounds quieter than I expected on what is supposed to be the worst day of the storm, so I’m confused. Are we in the eye of the hurricane?

      Your Hallowe’en plans sound great, jhagman!

      My Hallowe’en plan is to fly to Toronto for the World Fantasy Convention. Anyone out there who prays, I’d appreciate help in praying for the travel situation — and not just for me, but for everyone trying to travel in the rains and winds.

      Blessings and best wishes to all! I hope to be writing a post again sometime soon!

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