Christmas 2007: Naughty or... Mice?

24th - 25th December 2007

I was crouching and rising repeatedly, walking circles around the car, trying to detect the source of the lingering, rancid odour that has been plaguing the car for the last 2 days. The smell was a pungent combination of sour and pungent, remarkably distinct and utterly ravaging my more-than-acute olfactory sense.

I lowered my head, examining the surfaces of the tires, trying to look for some signs or hints of brown or black substances. After much smelling, I more or less concluded that the right side of the car was smellier than the left, so I examined it a little more.

Suddenly, at the corner of my eye, I saw 2 houseflies hovering around me. As the saying goes, "... like flies to rubbish," I figured that if I followed the flies, I would be able to find the 'rubbish,' in whatever form it took.

I traced their eccentric movements, and noticed that they frequently hovered around the front-right corner of the vehicle. So I scrutinized every single visible area for some signs of the source of the rancidness, all while continuing to strain my olfactory senses as I tried to use the acuteness of it as an additional aid, perhaps not for the wiser.

Not able to detect any visible sights, I decided to pop the lid of the engine, since it was the only possible area that I hadn't looked into. I looked at the mass of black and grey pipes and parts, not detecting anything out of place or close to a tint of brown. So I lowered my head and decided to rely on my sense of smell instead.

I strafed from the right to the left to the right again of the car engine, inhaling deep breaths of the offensive smell as I went along. "Whatever it is, it is surely coming from the right side, definitely the right side," I turned to her and said, before lowering my head to repeat the process again.

As I strafed from the right to the left and back to the right again, suddenly right in front of me I noticed something out of place. I squinted hard at it, under the shadow of the engine lid that was blocking out the light from the setting sun. There it was, caught amidst the winding pipes and parts, dark-brownish, furry and with its eyes tightly shut... a dead rat, caught between two parts of the car engine.

Squint hard at it and it will Stare back at You.

"Eew... gross," she said, as she took two steps away from the vehicle.

Stunned into silence momentarily, I finally uttered, "Fuck! What the hell? How the hell did a fucking rat die in my car engine?" after recovering from the disbelief.

After chain swearing for another 5 minutes or so, my rationality finally kicked in as I picked my handphone out of my pocket and dialled the Mother, telling her to come down with the Maid with a pair of thongs, plastic bags, and whatever else we might need.

Coming down without the most important of tools, the thong, the Mother passed me a long screwdriver and told me to try to use it to poke the carcass out. I turned the sharp end of the screwdriver at it, and applied pressure onto the dead bastards head, hoping to apply enough force to push him out of the jam. But as more pressure was applied, I could feel the end of the screwdriver slowly impaling into its still soft and probably rather decomposed skull. Deciding not to risk any grey matter explosions, I gave up.

The Mother sourced around for 2 clothes-hangers and tried using them as a makeshift thong to try pulling the bastard out. She grabbed its neck between the two hangers skillfully, and applied inward and upward pressure, as the neck of the rat extended most disgustingly. But every time she used a stronger upward force, she would lose grip of the bastard's neck.

After numerous tries, she finally gave in and told the Maid to try pulling it out with a plastic bag over her hand. Murmuring about how smelly it was in her mother-tongue, the Maid wrapped a plastic bag over her hand and tried to use all the brute force she could muster to try pulling the little bastard out. After 10 minutes of yanking and complaining, we finally gave up.

Driving to the nearby petrol kiosk, we craftily decided to try to seek help under the guise of filling the tank. "Could you please help us check the battery water?" the Mother asked, setting the poor attendant up for a most grotesque encounter. As he popped the lid, we tried to ask, as non-chalantly as possible, "and could you please help us remove the rat stuck over there?"

After payment, we walked back to the car, as the attendant told us, "the battery water has already been checked."

I walked over the the right side of the engine, and saw that the little bastard still lying there. "Uh, could you help us, like, remove the rat." I said.

Perhaps I would never know if he was feinting ignorance or was just purely unaware, but he kept insisting on having done his job and trying to close the lid of the engine. "Uh, the rat is over here, like right here, you see it?" I said, a little insistently and sarcastically, as I pointed out the exact location of it.

Caught dead in the corner, the young attendant realised that he had no choice but to help, yet he lacked the intestinal fortitude. So, he signalled to his Malay colleague to come over, pointing the problem out to him and giving him the most sheepish of grins.

Hiding the shock-expression on his face, the Malay attendant wrapped the plastic bag around his hand, turned his head and started yanking at the corpse of the little bastard. Twists, turns and a good 2-3 minutes of hard yanking later, he FINALLY managed to pull the carcass out of the deathtrap.

At a good 30cm long (at least) and probably weighing at least 1kg, the bottom half of the corpse of the rat was visibly missing a large amount of fur, probably sliced, scratched, burned or fried from the engine activity for the length of time that it was caught in it.

If Santa really exists and rewards people around the world based on the naughty or nice rule, then it would figure that this Vampire has been REALLY naughty this year, to deserve such a foul and rancid gift in my little Gothic Christmas stocking this year.

But this thought soon changed, as Christmas proper was celebrated under the traditional familial warmth of the season, with multitudes of gifts and even more camaraderie. Aside from the usual assorted of accessories and t-shirts, the Sin Harvest this year also yielded a good amount of quality gifts, including the hottest game titles (Ed & Ching and Florence), a Guess Watch (Princess Christy) and 2 sleek killer mugs and a pricey Silver Cross-Necklace (courtesy of the girlfriend). All this and more only served to remind me that perhaps, just perhaps, I haven't been all that naughty the year round to deserve such a bountiful harvest.

Sin Harvest

But this illusion of merit was short-lived, as the foul-odour of my Christmas stocking continued to plague the car up till post-party on Christmas day, when I asked the Father to have a look and see what can be done about it.

After much examination, the Father finally decided to bite the bullet (like he always does) and wash the engine of the vehicle. After picking out loose bits of rat-fur, cleaning dried blood on the under-side of the engine lid and scrubbing the innards of the engine-parts, the engine was almost totally rat-corpse-free as I gave it one final olfactory-check.

Still detecting a faint odour, I peered deep into the innards of the vehicle to notice, wrapped around 1 of the pipes, a faint orange-beige tube-like object. I reached 2 of my fingers into the inaccessible area, and picked out the string-like object.

"I think it's 1 of the rat's intestines," I said in disgust, as I felt the squishy texture of the thing on the tips of my fingers through the thin layer of tissue paper.

"Seriously Dad, out of 20-odd years of driving and owning a car, have you ever had anything like this happen to you?" I asked the Father.

"Nope, not at all," the Father answered, with a slight chuckle.

With my jaw wide-opened in disbelief, I thought to myself, "Man, I must have been REALLY naughty this year."