First published March 19, 2021
Back when I was in the bike shop, the workshop was my domain. It was a narrow dog-legged room with a door at each end: one led to the shop floor, and the other to the attic come bike store come dumping ground for 100-years of shop history. From the ceiling, wheels in various states of construction or deconstruction hung, and along the walls there were countless tools and storage bins filled with parts old and new. Besides this, there was the timber bulk of a pre-war workbench, two workstands plastered with past mechanics’ names; and a cylindrical black bin: the kind they used for street collections when I was a kid. This bin is where my story starts.
It was twenty past eight when I rolled my bike into the workshop. The smell of rancid milk hit me hard. One glance past the workstands revealed the source of the stench. Torn sandwich wrappers, strings of blue roll, and a milk carton seeping its curdling contents onto the bare, concrete floor all surrounded the bin. I cleared up the mess and refreshed the air with a liberal spray of GT85: le parfum des mécaniciens de vélo.
Later that day, whilst struggling to release the bottom bracket from some bicycle-shaped object—the kind you can buy for a hundred quid from a well-known car accessories retailer—I heard the chime of spokes as they bounced against one another. I looked up. Nothing. I returned to my work. I had barely seated the removal tool when the sound of colliding wheels filled the air yet again. I looked up. A huge black rat scurried overhead, using an RSJ as a rodent superhighway, before disappearing behind a mass of suspended inner tubes.
Now, I don’t know your level of rodent knowledge. If it’s limited, allow me to update you with Rats-101. They’re clever little buggers who are happy to gorge themselves on any cast-offs, however rotten. Once a rat takes up home, you’ve got a challenge in persuading it to seek alternative accommodation: during a previous encounter, I employed an airgun, a can of expanding foam, and half a bag of cement in my struggle. Not only are they persistent and intelligent, they often result in a loss of one’s appetite during lunch when they insist on scurrying overhead. In summary, rats are not cute, cuddly home or workplace accessories.
Given this context and personal history, you can appreciate why I was keen to see the back of this unwelcome visiter. So, I tracked down Ricardo, the shop’s manager; he was in the owner’s office having his lunch. I diligently explained the situation, the reason that we needed rid of Mr Rat, and that he, as manager, needed to do something about it. Ricardo’s response was not what I was hoping for; it was more on the lines of: the rat will soon get sick of the smell of the workshop and move on, so don’t worry about it.
For the next week, I had to live with fleeting glimpses of Mr Rat as he ambled along his rodent superhighway. I’m sure he was deliberately mocking me, proving the point that he was the boss and I was nothing more than a lowly pedal wrench. By the Thursday, he’d even take up acrobatics. These went on the lines of a double-back somersault from an RSJ, a perfect landing on my workbench, followed by a front-handspring off the wheelstand, before delivering a final bow to his audience before disappearing into a mass of discarded bike parts. I soon began to accept my subservient position and even gave him an occasional round of applause when he performed his most outlandish moves.
It was late morning, Friday, when I heard the scream. Approximately three-seconds later, I saw Ricardo flash past the workshop door. I stepped from my domain and onto the shop floor. To my left, the front door was swinging closed, evidence of Ricardo’s exit; to my right, Mr Rat was standing on his rear legs, armed cross, and smiling in a way that could only suggest one thing: smug satisfaction. I should have had words with him but, instead, I popped out front to track down Ricardo who proceeded to explain all. He’d been sat in the kitchen, tucking into his beloved chicken and mushroom Pot Noodle, when the swing bin began to rock to and fro. Thinking this was strange, even in the bike shop, he took a rolled-up copy of the National Geographic and used it to depress the bin’s lid. This was, of course, the very moment that Mr Rat jumped out of the bin, vaulted off the rolled-up magazine, and made good his escape.
After Ricardo’s encounter, he said that Mr Rat had to go. Alas, there was a problem. If there was one thing that Ricardo detested more than rats, it was spending money. To give you some context, this was a man who saved his personal evacuations until he arrived at work, not wanting to waste loo roll; a man who took his laundry to his mother to save wear and tear on his own machine; and a man who refused to buy anything unless it was on sale or bundled with a hefty bulk discount. Given his distaste for spending money, it came as no surprise that he insisted that Mr Rat had to be dispatched at zero cost. I had a plan.
The following morning at breakfast, I syphoned off some Cheerios and stowed them in my backpack. This was part one of my master plan. Part two was to place some of these Cheerios inside the swing bin and a few others on its lid. The principle was simple: Mr Rat smells Cheerios, jumps onto the bin lid, falls through into its interior, and we take the bin a couple of miles away and release Mr Rat to search for a new home. That was the plan, and it worked up to the point of transporting the swing bin with its inmate. Unfortunately, Ricardo point blank refused to transport this cargo in his little Fiat.
A half-hour had passed since Mr Rat’s entrapment; he was getting pretty restless and had taken to making a bid for freedom by chewing his way out. I could hear his persuasive gnawing, and I knew we had little time to act before he made his escape. I really didn’t want to have to deal with a pissed off rat with a serious attitude. Suddenly, plastic chips fell to the floor: he was breaking through. His gnawing was becoming more frenzied. I grabbed the bin, pushed open the shop’s back door, and launched the bin and its contents over the wall into the neighbouring restaurant’s yard.
The Rent-a-kill van arrived the next day, and I knew Mr Rat would be no more. It’s funny really, but I do miss him.