LIESEL DAISLEY of the SAVE Foundation gifted me with a miniature Peter Polar Bear.
In case you don’t know who he is, the beloved bear is a cereal mascot. Last Sunday, after watching too many serial killers on Lifetime, I decided to go outside and chill with a beer. I held the new Sunday Sun, reading about the results from CADRES and Peter the Poll-er. Or who people who speak proper English would refer to as “the pollster”.
While opinions on the results of the poll were poles apart, depending on emotions, politics and beliefs, at the end of the day, from listening to him over many years, I cannot say that Peter Wickham is politically biased in any way. While I may be polarised by some for stating this belief, I am of the view that when given an assignment, he tries his best to execute professionally.
But back to the “new look and feel” of the Sunday Sun. A Broomes, a Thorne and Greene. I enjoyed those three additions. The more I read, the more impressed I was. But then, my neighbour began blasting some tunes from UB40. Rat In The Kitchen was playing at a million decibels.
Almost two seconds later – call it coincidence or irony – his dog started excavating his beautifully manicured lawn, pulling out a massive ‘man-rat’ and jovially thrashing it, left to right, until the rodent was either dazed or dead.
While I was lounging with my paper and beer, dog runs towards me, rat-in-mouth. Sunday paper is no longer new and fresh, since I use it to flog the dog. Dog drops rat, beer bottle falls, spilling beer on rat, who miraculously rises from the dead, seemingly tipsy; slipping, stumbling and staggering over my Stag bottle. I was so scared I could feel the sweat dripping from my ears. I start hollering for murder.
Neighbour Mickey comes to my rescue. Call it dramatic irony in its truest sense, since Mickey shares his name with one of the biggest rats in the world. I suspect that Disney only markets Mickey as a “mouse” instead of a “rat” because of the alliterative effect. To me, Mickey is a rat.
Anyway, my neighbour Mickey, who is a man, came to see what all the racket was about. Upon seeing the rat, he grabs the nearest thing in sight – a tennis racket belonging to a friend.
Mickey misses the rat and hits the concrete pole near to me. Racket bends out of shape and I am out of breath, because I am out of shape. Rat runs out of sight, but not out of mind. Dog owner walks towards us, bent out of shape because his “dog would get sick” because of my rat.
MY rat? Imagine that?!? So now, reader, tell me: if the rat was brought to me by the neighbour’s dog, pulled out of a hole which borders our properties, is it my rat? I know we don’t need a poll to answer that!
* Veoma Ali is an author, broadcaster, advertising exec and, most important, a karaoke lover.
