I Dub Thee…

The rat was out on the feeder again this morning. James stood at the sliding door and eyed him.

“He’s big. Man. What’s his name?”

“I haven’t named him,” I admitted. (I did not attempt to explain my peculiar chain of logic here, which was that A) there was only one rat, and thus “the rat” was a perfectly good identifier, and B) rats, unlike squirrels and birds and whatnot, are dignified, self-contained individuals, on par with a dog or cat in the brain department, and one gets a vague sense that they may already have their own names, and C) despite pet rats, a father who raised rats, and a general fondness for rats, I am still unable to shake my nagging conditioning that says wild rats are vermin and should not thus be assigned monikers.)

James, however, having no such qualms, said “He looks like a Wilbur.”

“Wilbur?”

“Totally a Wilbur. Look at those ears. That’s a Wilbur.”

Unable to fault this logic, I agreed that he did, indeed, have Wilbur-esque ears, and thus the rat joined the ranks of the named fauna behind the house. Hello, Wilbur!

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