THE RAT HOLE: An Intro to The Great Game for World Wild Domination

In the time before Big Spring, civilization had killed, enslaved, tamed, and or domesticated all of earth's wild creatures. Bison were herded into parks and other wilderness ghettos; wolves were tracked by Park Rangers and shot by ranchers; salmon learned to follow the new river rules with their damns and engineered channels; elk ran and hid from the sport hunters and bloody highways like the rest of the wilderness, and the insects, rats, and raccoons were diagnosed, labeled, and treated to death by the monthly culling of generic pest control companies. Nothing was wild. The land and soil with its rich culture of worms and microbes from sea to shining sea on every continent was owned by someone, or some inhuman govering body or character, who took an active interest in making sure The Action all flowed in accordance to Its grand fucking master plan.

Eventually, even our time--the past, present, and future--was tamed by the writers of civilization armed with computers and algorithms. Most of them make a lot of money writing sci-fiction fantasies about a "wilderness" that somehow still exists out there in a magical spacetime beyond human control, so they're relucant to tell their markets and mass audiences the other side of the story. They need you to believe in the existence of wild creatures, so you don't suddenly leap to your feet mid-movie and run screaming from your schools, workplaces, and theaters when you realize that humans are no more wild, or free, than zoo bears.

For the longest time, we believed the last wild creature on earth took its last gasp of freedom a few months after Rough Riding Teddy charaged San Juan Hill. We were sure the thought of yet another blowhart charging up a hill in the name of commerce was enough to finally break that last wild mustang spirit. We believed that storyline for years before we realized how hard it was to pay bills selling our pest control services to humans by telling them stories like: Roof Rats: The Great Co-Habitators, Humans Are Nature's Bedbug Bait, and Orkin Culls and Controls the Largest Rodent Populations in The World. Basically, in spite of the riches enjoyed by many of history's doomsayers, we the characters of Storysold: Pest Control realized that hope sells better than fear. Doomsaying and fear mongering has its limit, even for a pest control company.

So please do your best to believe us. If you believe, then it will make it easier for us to believe too. And then we'll all have hope for what we're calling, "rewildering The Action," or more in keeping with our team's love for lenghtly titles: The Great Game (for World Wild Domination).

Our story begins with a few little known facts:

A) Crows can't hunt for shit

B) roaches are horribly dependant on the offerings found in refrigerator drip pans

C) and ants aren't as smart as they seem

That makes wild rats and humans the leading contenders to win it big in The Great Game and arrive undead in Big Spring. You know, after all the doomdoing of The Tribulation, Zombie Apocalypse, The Super Massive Singularity (aka The Suck), and the next ice age all have their ways with our planet's working storyline. And both of those would-be victors have serious, to major, addictions to the comforts of civilization.

Most humans wouldn't be able to pick the one wild human in a lineup of average domesticated humans if their lives depended on it. Rats have the same problem. Very few rats know the difference between a professionally culled rat population serviced by generic giants like Rentokill, Terminix, and Orkin, or civilized/infested rats (aka Disney rats), or proper freedom-loving wild rats. Most rats simply assume that the other rats they meet are like them. And that's what makes us the experts here...

Among other stock characters, Jake the bumbling CEO of Storysold: Pest Control hosts a badass rat catcher/environmental control operator named Wilderness Security Guide. He's a he, and she's a she, but they Get It. Jake also hosts he/he asshole characters like Bookmaker Jake (and his Future Famous Author), Uncle, Organic Farm Helper, Dishmaster, and the half bug/half human It character who calls itself, Pest Predator.

Like any rat catcher worth their salt, Guide has breached The Fourth Wall of civilizaton so many times in pursuit of her prey, she's forgotten a lot of the things that make a character civil. You know, civil things like naming the capital of Wisconsin, algebra, and feeling anything for the sport teams, movie stars, and politicians who flash across the many smart phones and screens of The Fourth Wall. Like a cat on a couch during the next exciting episode of Netflix, Guide can see and hear the noise on the screen, but she chooses not to react to it, because the light and sound projected on The Fourth Wall aren't action-packed enough to compete with the many live action stories happening all around her.

Speaking of The Action, you'd have to read a 465 page novel called The Living City, our first live action novella called, The Rise and Fall of The Novel Corporation, and Storysold: Pest Control, Season 1 (2019-2020) to really Get It, but all that boring reading isn't really needed. We're here to share the story of what happened last week in a rich suburb of Portland, Oregon. It was mid-winter, and Guide was experiencing what she calls, "The Wilderness Test." It's the action the rats (and other critters, including humans) perform when they're exploring their environment in search of food and shelter. And there's no greater time for urgent testing of human structures in search of entry holes than mid-winter. Generally, Guide believes if one of her environmental exclusions can pass The Wilderness Test during a rough winter, then she can count that one a win.

It was her third crawlspace of the day. The back of our work van (the rat mobile) had 2 dead adult rats, 5 dead mice, and a mummified cat that had been unearthed Indiana Jones style in a crawlspace she was cleaning and excluding in an effort to keep Ratty Claws and her ratonauts from making themselves at home in the home on NE Cook St.

It was Guide's first run through the guts of our new customer's home. The call for help had hit Jake's phone earlier that morning. Her name was Jennifer. She was the owner of a hundred year old farm house in Lake Oswego. The farm had long been developed, but it had a plaque beside the door with the original name: PFEIFER FARM. And Jennifer was not happy with her current company, "Critter Control." This was the second time her family had to suffer the death smell because the rats were still tunneling under the skirts of their 100 year old farm house.

After Jake suited up, transforming into his rat catcher like Superman in a phone booth in the back of his work van, Guide walked to the edge of the crawlspace hatch, switched her headlamp on, and adventured forward into the guts of Jennifer's home with her respirator pulled down, so she could smell the death better. Her crawl soon became a low crawl, and then her low crawl soon became a tight belly shuffle when she neared the back corner, a place Critter Control described as "too low to go."

Rat droppings were everywhere. With a little digging, Guide found where they were getting in. Critter Control had installed wire around the foundationless skirt part of the home, but it was clear that the rats had turned that into their highway a long time ago.

As she wiggled through the wires, gas lines, and ductwork, the smell of death became stronger. A few feet ahead, she saw the back corner like a clearing in a meadow. Once her body was a little more free to move, she dug along the wall like a rat searching for tunnels and burrows. A few inches below the surface she found a connecting tunnel for the tunnel she discovered closer to the hatch. Instictively, Guide pulled one of her fancy lemon-scented trash bags from her jumpsuit preparing to bag the dead rat she expected to discover anytime now.

"Shit," she said to herself when she realized she could no longer smell the smell of death. "I hate it when that fucking happens."

She couldn't smell it, because she was on top of it. Or more accurately, it was under the black plastic vapor barrier she was crawling on.

A few moments later, she had a nice, fat, maggoty Norway rat bagged in hand. "Remind me to send Critter Control a friendly note about using snap traps instead of bait poisons," Guide mumbled to the rest of our team. "Or at least use some traps when you use bait. It gives the rats the option of a quick, honorable death, and it makes it a hell of a lot easier to find them when they do. God, I hate fucking lazy Bait Jockeys."

Guide was about to make the return trip back to the van when her fingers (which acted like third eyeballs in crawlspaces) hit something strange. It wasn't a chunk of concrete, or a old piece of wood, or a tool a plumber had left behind long ago. It was a mysterious black book. There was writing and pictures in it, but most of the pages had been worn, torn, and pissed on by rats for what looked like a very long time.

"Hum," Guide said as she dug futher down like she was unearthing a rat burrow. "I wonder if a pack rat dragged this in...?"

"No, not a pack rat," she mused when she dug out the edges of a familiar piece of rat catching equipment.

"What a relic!" Guide smiled as she studied the old rusted bait station.

Curious, she set the old bait station aside and continued to dig futher down the rat hole.

"We have to go," Jake employed. "It's getting dark, and we're already at the end of our next service window."

"Just a few more moments," Guide replied, ignoring her human host as usual. "I have a feeling there's some..."

And then she saw it. Cool as always, Wilderness Guide dug the human skull from the rat hole and presented it to our team. An old miner-sytle helmet and candle-powered headlamp was still fixed to its forehead.

Guide was cool, but the rest of us were not. We were freaking out. What was a human skull doing in Jennifer's crawlspace? We'd all seen The Burbs starring Tom Hanks. Maybe the reason why she had rats in her crawlspace had nothing to do with Critter Control's shitty exclusion work? Maybe her cry for pest control was all a cover story? What if she was feeding the flesh of her victims to the rats that lived under her home?

It was then that Wilderness Guide lost all control of our story. We grabbed the rusty old bait station, the mysterious black book, and the dead rat bagged in lemon scented plastic--and made our way, fast as possible, back to the civilization just beyond the hatch.

Breathing hard, Jake stripped his jumpsuit off and threw it in the back of our van. Then he pulled his van keys from his pocket with every intention of fleeing the scene, driving away never to return. Then we stopped. Just stopped like we didn't know what to do next. We'd never fled our customer's home in a panic before.

Instead, we opened the mysterious black book, flipped to the page that read The End, and read the following lines:

DEAR FELLOW RAT CATCHER,

(WHO ELSE WOULD DIG THIS FAR DOWN A RAT HOLE?)

ALACK, ALACK, I'M BLEEDING OUT IN OLD FARMER PFEIFER'S CRAWLSPACE. HE'S IN THE FIELD, AND I'M TOO FAT AND WEAK TO CRAWL OUT WITH ONE ARM.

PLEASE CONTINUE MY SERVICE STORY HERE. THE BOOK WILL TELL YOU HOW TO FOLLOW THE WILD ONE AND WIN THE GREAT GAME FOR REWILDING THE ACTION! THE FATE OF OUR PLANET NOW RESTS IN YOUR HANDS.

WHATEVER YOU DO: DON'T LET YOUR CUSTOMERS FEED YOU TOO MUCH PIE, AND DON'T DRINK TOO MUCH BEER!

THE MONEY THE BAIT STATION IS MY LIFE SAVINGS. I DIDN'T LEAVE IT FOR YOU. I STASH MY CASH LIKE SQUIRRELS DO IN MY CUSTOMERS' CRAWLSPACES. THE BANKS AREN'T SAFE.

THINK ABOUT IT. IT JUST MAKES GOOD SENSE.

AND NOW I DIE...

HAPPY HUNTING...

RAT CATCHER

We took a deep breath, put the van key back in our pocket, and walked to the back of the van and opened it. We stared at the bait station for a long while before Predator became impatient. "Just open it," he said as we fumbled with our set of bait station keys. Not of them fit.

Tried of watching us open it the right way, Predaor picked up the rusty old box and dropped it on the street.

Sure as shit, a pile of old greenbacks popped from the box like confetti. No one was suprised when Bookmaker took the time to count each and every piece of pressed and dyed fibers. In his world, being $22,000 dollars richer was almost as awesome as becoming a Future Famous Author.

It was dark when we met Jennifer at the front door. She was so pleased that we'd found her dead rat, she asked Storysold: Pest Control to take over Critter Control's contract.

Naturally we asked if they were missing any of their rat catchers.

Jennifer laughed and changed the subject. "How much would you charge to keep the rats out of our home?"

Bookmaker said, "How about twenty two thousand dollars?"

Jennifer laughed again. "No for real?"

We laughed too, but for a different reason. Then we quoted her a price less like doctors of the environment and more in keeping with the value of a generic rat catcher. Our customer was very pleased.

At the beginning of our next service, we posted the Old Rat Catcher's black book on the pillar closest to the crawlspace hatch. We'd replaced all the pages the rats pissed on, paper clipped in our first service story called The Rat Hole: An Intro to The Great Game for World Wild Domination, and then the customer service characters of Storysold: Pest Control went to work producing the next chapter of action for Jennifer's home.

We know you humans will never read this, and that's OK. It's The Action that counts. We want to make sure our planet still has a few good, wild rat catchers who know how to beat the rats at their own game.

As it stands now, they're betting heavy that--when Big Spring finally comes--there won't be a human in sight.

Welcome to The Great Game.