Read Dead Rat Log | Tapas Web Community

I saw you near that terrible traffic light on Hirsch and California. The light there works but is often ignored by drivers as the streets before and after have stop signs. Stop signs that they never fully stop. I guess a traffic light was put there to help the elderly and children get into their respectful buildings: The retirement home and the daycare. Yet drivers ignore the light, driving right through red lights and almost hitting elderly ladies in wheeled chairs and childrens using a walking rope. I would guess that you were waiting for the light to change, only for a car to scare you back onto the sidewalk, as you laid right next to the truncated dome mat that I often stood on top of as I waited to cross the street. You must’ve waited a long time as your body was laying right on the curb and on its side, as if you had fallen asleep.

I often stand there for a long time too. This bus stop is the same one I waited at to go to high school and now it’s the stop I get off at when I return home from college. It has been, what, 7 years? 7 years of relying on the same bus stop. 7 years of days spent looking both ways at a red light to make sure I don’t get hit by inattentive drivers. And within this time I have never seen you before. Have you been hiding? Or were you new to the neighborhood?

You were clearly an adult, though, you weren’t big. In fact you were pretty skinny for a rat living so close to a large park that is full of litter and un-emptied trash cans. So you must’ve been new to the neighborhood. Perhaps from a cleaner area of Chicago, if such a place exists; A place that didn’t offer you daily meals in the form of forgotten Mcdonalds and Burger King on benches.

Late fall in 2019 was a snowy one and you, ignored by the cleaning crew that never showed up, ended up buried under the snow, freezing your rotting body and preserving your darkening flesh.

When winter break came, I had no need to go to that bus stop as my college building was closed and I preferred the solitude of this quiet section of Wicker Park. Also my Upass was inactive and I didn’t want to spend money on bus trips, not when my mom has a car.

I didn’t see you anymore until the next year, when things became warmer and the snow that smothered your body was touched by sunlight, melting it. Your body did not change after the ice had melted. Or did it? It’s been so long that I don’t remember. Your fur was still matted and wet and your body was not any bigger or smaller than before. No matter how long I stared at you, I could not spot the moving bulges of maggots beneath your skin. You were untouched and preserved by the frost.

And this preservation lasted during the spring showers and the gentle heat that comes with the season change.

You got skinnier but were still untouched. The last time I saw you was in march of 2020, right when the quarantine started and I was forced to stay home. During the long period between March and July, the month I began to jog at the park behind the bus stop, you were, hopefully, cleaned up properly and not devoured by someone’s unleashed pet dog who runs around the open, grassy areas of Humboldt park.