He thought that was funny and went and told Mom what I said and she laughed.

Don’t try and read into the 7-year-old’s compound adjective of “four-legged,” I think he just meant…well, I haven’t seen a three-legged one before. I am serious, though, about another varmint thing in the house. And when Lois informed me a couple minutes later that I could be the “good” guy and be the one that takes the credit for getting the hamster-thing, I still said that she wasn’t right in the head.

And she laughed and left for a meet-up with her mom and a friend.

We did like Weebie a lot and the boys did too. Weebie played with the cats and I think even starred in a few of our movies. But, like most Weebie-sized pets, he died–on Evan’s 8th birthday. It was a sad affair with Weebie losing his eye sight and then, technically dying on Evan’s birthday, but we sort of hid Weebie from view (or said that Weebie was resting) and then pronounced him dead the day after May 23rd.

I think my aversion to small things dying came at an early age…around the same age of Evan when Weebie died. Here’s how I explain the story in a piece I wrote in 2003 and I’ll set up the context by including the first two paragraphs of “Mickey Rat” and then the last three paragraphs.

View Larger MapWashoe Court two blocks into an arc at which we lived. There were a dozen houses to the left of us stretching to the McCann’s house that bordered Neotomas Avenue. To the right, were three houses: the Davis’ (who were Catholic which didn’t mean really anything to me except that their boys got to wear grey slacks and sweater to St. Eugene’s school), the Robinsons and the Germans (who remind me of the kids’ obsession with Radley house). Brad Frost and I once played ding-dong-ditch on the Germans, Brad tripped when we made the get away and broke his arm in the process. Washoe Court straightened out and ran parallel for about thirty feet and then made way for another court in which Esther, our babysitter for a few years, resided. Fred, her husband, rarely talked much and her sons didn’t torture us as much as taunted. Washoe Court then rejoined the paralleling and yielded two more houses until it reached Ne0tomas also. Brad Frost, my best friend of 6 years until we moved to the River, was our neighbor to the left; the Ramseys, the Smiths and a couple houses down were the Gradys. We didn’t play with those two blond wavy-haired boys much at all. That’s why it’s still so strange on what possessed them to make us hate them so much and we were a fairly mellow family.

Apparently we lived in a “custom-built” house that we designed and built by some lawyer who lived in it for about a year before selling it to us and moving to the City. I’m sure the neighborhood was happy to see a cardiologist with his young family move into 2546 Washoe Court. There would gatherings and barbeques and parties and some showing of the gathering wealth of the Judson family. I remember by father telling me how to grill a t-bone steak on our custom built, brick grill complete with a heating oven for things like potatoes below the grill behind a 2 x 3 foot black iron door. I also remember wheelbarrowing those bricks and heaving them off the 20 foot cliff in our backyard 8 years later due to age and atrophy and erosion…

It was around this time that the Jason, our half calico bred cat, wasn’t enough of the wild kingdom for my brother. We housed various lizards and snakes in our room, but we were quite fond of our rats which became so numerous that Mike built a shed in the back yard by the fence we shared with the Frosts. We housed the 100 or so rats in a large, Plexiglas aquarium and several cages. We feed them the usual pet store rodent food along with peanut butter which they would lick off your finger. My mother even donned a “Mickey Rat” t-shirt that she got at a flea market in Sebastopol and even though it might have been an editorial message toward the early Disney World, I always looked at it as sort of a family shirt celebrating our rats.

Brad and I are either riding our bikes or trying to throw rocks over the power lines that hovered the court when I hear my sister or brother yelling something. Stephany is running toward me and I come with her, half running in slow motion. We’re headed toward the shed and Mike walks past us looking down. I feel death and I see images of saws with blood and white and red rats with unblinking eyes and mouths agape and heads with no bodies and I turn and ask Stephany. She says Mike heard it was the Grady boys and my mom comes out and is upset and we’re half happy because we never did liked the Grady boys but more than that we ask ourselves “Why?”

The Judson mob, all four of us, led by my mother, head to the gated front yard of the Gradys drab green house and my mother is talking/shouting and the offenders are summoned by their mother and admit to the crime and I find out later that for their punishment the Grady boys are put on restriction for one day. We clean up the crime scene and make the unanimous decision to let the remaining 11 rats go free. I remember it was the next day and in sort of ceremonial fashion, all of us, Mike, Stephany, and I make a speech and then set our pets free. And I remember the fog and the rats heading down the edge of the incline that lead toward the wilderness of the Santa Rosa Creek. We stood there for a while and then made our way back into the house past the shed and what was left of my father’s brick grill.

I think we’re safe if we just stick to one gineau pig. It looks like the boys will be getting a living Easter present.