Jewish rats

Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2005 @ 7:28 p.m.

Although all my finals and research papers were done with last week, I have been going into the lab every day 'cos I'm volunteering in the behavioral neuroscience lab, running experiments with rats.

I'm right at the bottom of the academic food chain - all the graduate students have gone away for the holidays, and I'm the lowly undergraduate holding down the fort. Didn't matter much to me, though... I kinda liked being in the lab alone. However, today was the last day of this particular experiment... and this meant that the rats had to be whacked.

I didn't do it, of course... all we have to do is to put a tag up on their cages, and the next day, they're gone (the vivarium assistants do the dirty work - they gas them just like in World War II). It was the first time I played the role of the bad guy (i.e., putting them up for a holocaust), and I didn't like it one bit. Really wish the rats could have been given to pet shops, but that's one animal that no pet store has a need for - they already have too many, and they kill off the extra ones they have themselves.

So yeah, after putting up the murder tags, I walked back to the lab, where the radio was playing "Have yourself a merry little Christmas". Damn, it felt horrible. Those rats were sooo cute (Except for #46 - that one's psychotic and chewed on my fingers too many times)! But there's nothing I could have done, I guess. I can't possibly adopt 57 rats every time an experiment ends. And besides, I have Smelly Cat. If the rats had a choice, I'm sure they would have preferred the gas chamber.

Oh well... so here's kind of a sappy and cheesy (no pun intended) eulogy to those rats... may heaven be a big giant hunk of Edam cheese for you all.

Except for #46. I hope you rot in hell.

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