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I was talking on the phone with an old friend about my little pet mouse, Prudence. She had recently died, and I missed her terribly. Not everyone could understand how the world had grown gray for me when I lost my rodent companion, how hard it was to come home at the end of the day to my empty New York City apartment where no one, not even a mouse, stirred. But I knew I could turn to my friend, a scientist who worked with lab animals. She listened to me grieve for Prudence, and began to tell me about the rats she worked with."They are so cute, so sweet," she said. "And so smart and interested." And then she asked if I had ever considered a rat as a pet.
I had not. I didn't want to replace Prudence; the idea of supersizing my mouse held no appeal. But after I hung up, I thought about it. Newly parted from my boyfriend, I was lonely. I called my friend back. "Okay," I said. "Would you bring me a rat, please?"
A few days later, I took the train out to Long Island, got dinner and a rat, and toted my new pet back to the city in a shoe box. I decided to name her Hester, after Hawthorne's stigmatized heroine. If you're a rat, I reasoned, you don't need to wear a scarlet letter -- you are a scarlet letter.
The cage was all clean and ready. I reached into the shoe box to remove Hester. That's when she whipped her head around and sank her ratty teeth into my hand.
I yelped and cursed. She may have looked like a bigger version of Prudence -- white, with red eyes, and a tail longer than her body -- but this rat was no mouse.
Telling myself that maybe Hester was freaked out from the move -- leaving the comforting fluorescent light of the lab and the scent of other experiment-bound rodents -- I tried again to connect with her one Saturday afternoon. I made a peace offering of a cracker. She ignored the food but wasted no time in chomping on my skin. Then she withdrew.
She ran to a corner of her cage and cowered. I retreated to a corner of mine and sat at my desk, head in hands. I'd always been able to communicate with animals. What was wrong with Hester? Or, more disturbingly, what was wrong with me?
It was a relief to go to my editorial assistant job. But inevitably I had to come home to a rat-infested apartment. Hester would be alert the moment I walked in. Each time I opened the door to give her food, she'd scamper over, a sinister look in her eye, wanting blood, I could tell. I learned to be very quick.
A few weeks after I got her, I could no longer put off cleaning her cage. I opened the door and, after some tentative air sniffing and poking about, she climbed out. I was able to guide her to the floor, where she could safely hang around while I was cage cleaning. In such a small space, it wasn't likely that she could get lost.
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