The Death of Benjie the Mole-Rat

There used to be a mole which made a home in our garden. We only discovered it when my dad caught him (or her?) caught in his rat-trap. Funny little creature, gigantic claws, pointy nose and the smallest pair of eyes. My dad couldn’t figure out what to do with it and just let it go. It didn’t scamper off as expected, it crawled its way ever slowly to the nearest patch of soil it could find and disappeared. Since then, my dad has had a fascination for these creatures. He couldn’t believe that our home had one, specially since underneath our shallow topsoil laid a huge slab of adobe.

So one day, while my dad was walking home from the barber around the corner, he spotted this pink creature on the side of the road. It had a pointed snout, what seemed like claws and had small eyes. He picked it up, laid it carefully in the palm of his hand and brought it home. He showed it to me, asking whether it was what he thought it was. Since I too had been fascinated by the mole he found earlier, I had let myself and my dad believe that it was indeed a newborn mole!

My dad cared for that creature as he did all his pets. He fashioned out a baby bottle to feed it milk, ground up bits of food and made him a home out of a discarded aquarium. It was complete with wood chips he had made as well as a small sort of pillow where he laid it after feeding. For weeks, his curiosity turned into an obsession as he diligently made sure that it was healthy and even missed out on some of his favorite television programs just watching his new found pet struggle around with the wood chips and glass.

After a few weeks, it was evident that the creature was not a mole, rather it was a common sewer rat abandoned by its mother. It took my dad a while to finally come to terms with this discovery, but now it didn’t matter to him what the heck this creature was. Now, he even named the little guy, Benjie.

Benjie grew up to be a sort of amusement in our household. He was now a juvenile, and he did not like to be cooped up in the aquarium any longer. So my dad let him wander the grounds and made sure the dogs never mistook Benjie for food. (A harsh lesson for our dogs and cats) Benjie was free to come in and out of the house and he roamed around to the dogs area, scrounging up food from their leftovers. He was free to climb trees, drink from the fishpond (I swear I saw him one time plotting against the fish!), chase birds and climb the table where we fed him from our plates. His mild temperament earned him praises from my dad, and as a mark of distinction, he fashioned out a gold necklace for Benjie who seemed to be comfortable with his shiny bling.

So Benjie became a part of the family. My dad usually introduced him to visitors by allowing him to climb up his arms to his shoulders, perched like a pirate’s parrot and just sitting there, seemingly listening in on the conversation (To the disgust of our guests, I could imagine).

Soon, Benjie found love. He was sharing his nest with a common sewer rat, one unlike him was void of any refinements and a twice weekly shampoo session. He seemed settled in with his mate, they chased each other around the yard and shared food. My dad was so proud of Benjie, he smiled as he watched Benjie taking food and rather than eating with us, brought it back to his nest. Then he would look at me and exclaim why can’t I be more like Benjie. (Yeah, he always wanted me to be a dirty rat!)

One day, as I was leaving for school I noticed drops of blood leading to the small canal we had in our yard. Following the blood, I found Benjie, laying there in the shallow water in a pool of his own blood, his beady eyes open and his necklace a few inches away. It reeked of murder in the household! I almost ran as I woke up my dad, I told him what had happened to Benjie. He sprang up from bed still in his underwear and with utter disbelief, shouted at me to tell him this was not true. He ran to the canal and found that indeed, Benjie was no more. He shook his head, took Benjie into the same palms of his hand where he had carried a pink creature back home months back, and cleaned the blood off his dark brown fur.

I can’t recall how the funeral and burial went, I had a class to go to and had to leave my dad with his heart broken and asking a million questions as to how it happened. I came home and there was no more Benjie. His nest had been cleaned out, the blood washed off the floor and his home during the early weeks of his life had been washed and taken out of sight. What I did recall was a set of rat traps laid out on the yard, carnage was to come…

TO BE CONTINUED…