An early morning journey led me down a new path.
It was new to me but not new to the erosion of time.
It was on this path that I glanced down to see the rat.
It wasn’t a particularly engaging rat; he (or she, as it may have been) appeared rather largish, but otherwise was most ordinary in rat-like respects.
The thing that jumped out at me was that this rat, unlike others I’ve heard in the walls at night, was dead.
Dead and bleached to a whitish-grey colour with time and exposure.
“Now,” I said to myself, as I was alone (with the exception of the dead, decaying rat, and one does not speak in public to such things, for fear of being labelled as a lunatic) “now why would no one clean up this rat?”
Then I looked about more closely, and saw that the rat fit in well with the decor of the rest of the neighbourhood.
It will be a long time before I pass that way again, I pray.