The rat from next-door

Finally I got a suitable acrylic glass box for my rat mummy which I found about ten years ago. By this chance I took some pictures of it and if you want to know the story about it, please read more under the cut.


I work in a shop, which exists since over 100 years. Said shop can be found in a building which exists for ages as well. So no wonder the shop was really rustic: Creaky floor, labyrinthine layout and an antique dim interior. All in all a real mom-and-pop store which is why the people loved it!

But more special than the shop itself was our staff room. Occsasionally there was a strange smell and we always wondered what the hell was dying under the wooden planks! We never found something but we knew there were mice and rats.
The time goes by and our chef decided to refurbish the whole shop which included our staff room as well. They pulled out the antique interior and the creaky floor and brought out not only old abandoned nests of some animals but also skeletons of mice and rats!

Even though my colleagues knew that I’m collecting bones, nobody told me about those mummified rats and mice. So when I got the messages about those skeletons it already was too late. All skeletons were broken or gone. All but one…
I went back to the destroyed staff room, couldn’t believe that there was a treasure once now gone. Needless to say I was quite unhappy until I saw it! There it laid, like it died only for me – a wonderful and most perfect rat skeleton!

How did she (yes, in my eyes it’s a she-rat) die? Was it poison or just a natural death? I can’t say it, because I’m afraid that if I touch the corpse too hard it will brake to pieces. But I know that the old boss strewed some rat poison a few times. So I think the cause of death was that poison.

Each time when I look at that skeleton with a bit fur around it I ask myself how the rat lived. What kind of adventures she had to experience? I will never get to know this…