Tales and Tails of Rats and Igaunas

I want to write about something good, and something other than the recent drama that I've written about for the last week.

I search my mind for a "prompt." Ha.

What are some things traversing my mind?

My children in their formative years: their words, the baby squirrel we raised, field trips, fear of heights, hikes, snow, guinea pigs, the science center...

Ahh. The science center.

From 1997 through sometime in 2002, I worked at a science center which at the time was one of the largest in the southeastern United States. For at least four of those years I worked as an on-site Camp-In Director. Camp-Ins were a program at the time where up to 400 people would spend the night in the museum. Scout troops, school groups, church groups, other groups, families.

I'd pack a small overnight bag and my sleeping bag for a 20- to over 40-hour stint. Afterward, I'd often feel I'd been gone for 5 days to another place. In a sense I had.

I along with others abode in a giant museum, complete with heads of animals on the walls and a live rain forest, not to mention the marine area and touch pool and electric eels, and all the clicks and whirs of all sorts of science gadgets. It was always an adventure with rarely a dull moment...from checking everyone in on a Friday or Saturday late afternoon to checking them all out late morning the next day; sandwiched between were all the workshops, snacks, meals, lost-in-the-museum campers, sick kids and headaches, IMAX movies, sidewalk nightlife onlookers from the busy uptown Charlotte Trade Street wanting to come join the party as they observed through the large glass windows that took up almost the entire front museum walls.

The museum had some resident basketball rats. I can't recall their names now. During normal business hours, not the special Camp-In hours, the rats would be rolled out at certain times to perform their basketball agility.

Their basketball court was designed inside a large waterless aquarium. At each end of the structure was a small basketball goal. It seems the basketball was a ping pong ball.

Each rat would push the ball down the court. Then using their front paws would pick up the ball, stand on their hind legs... and DUNK! Bravo!! Two points! Then the rat would gobble up the treat given him by the attendee. The treat was pushed through a hole that was located near each basketball goal.

At night the rats were kept in a different aquarium in a storage room on the main level of the large museum.

The museum was large, still is. I got to know the place like the back of my hand. My favorite section in the museum was the rain forest where I sometimes worked as a presenter, handling Solomon Island skinks, hissing cock roaches, and a tarantula or two. A 5-foot long iguana lived in the trees in the rain forest section. I don't recall his name.

There were birds too, an assortment of tropical birds that made their home with the iguana, among the faux trees and cliff sides. They'd awaken me each morning of the Camp-Ins. I usually slept on a cot or sleeping pad right outside the enclosed glass area of the top of the rain forest area on the main level of the museum.

The rats. One night my daughter and I went into the storage room to get supplies for the Camp-In. My daughter was in her teens and volunteered as a Sci-teen helping out during Camp-Ins, everthing from set-up to assisting presenters in work shops. There was lots of set-up to be done. The staff was a skeleton crew so we were always busy clocking off miles of walking and trotting about the four huge levels of the giant building.

My daughter and I entered the storage room. The rats were not in their aquarium.

"Dang it. We don't have time for this. But we gotta catch the rats so they don't get into the museum where all the people are."

That'd be disastrous. Especially if the rats decided to visit folks while they lay asleep on the hard floors that night. We had enough problem with regular cock roaches freaking people out. I could only imagine a rat. I'd heard the story about when the tarantula got loose and decided to take a tour at night checking out the human-stuffed sleeping bags.

A dart. Out of the corner of my eye, amongst all the boxes and piles of stuff in the storage room, I saw a rat dart across. "Close the door!"

My daughter and I spent the next 20 minutes slying endeavoring to catch the rats. The only way to catch them is by their tails. It apparently doesn't hurt them. We were successful. Finally grabbing the tail of each rat and carrying it head down to the aquarium, securing the lid so they couldn't get out again.

Rats can be caught by their tails, but not iguanas. Iguanas' tails are designed to break off when grabbed. It's a protection they are afforded for survival as they live in the trees of the rain forest.

Once an iguana we were iguana sitting got loose in the living room of our home. That's a tale for another time, perhaps.
________________________