The Difference Between Rat and Wrong

Our plans today were to drop some recycle off, go to the indoor fleamarket in Brunswick, and have lunch at a new Vietnamese restaurant that we finally managed to be able to go to when it's open and Carrie and I both have the day off.

En route we see a white rat scurry across the road in front of us in Lisbon. We, of course, stop so as not to hit it and decide because it's white, must be a domesticated rat that will not survive outside and therefore we must catch it. Which we do with only a little bit of fuss.

We check with a couple of different people in the neighborhood but they don't know of anybody keeping rats, let alone missing one. One lady mentions a relatively nearby, but out of our way, vet that works with the Lewiston animal shelter and we decide that would probably be the easiest thing to do. Unfortunately, while they do work with the local shelter, which is considerably out of our way, they do so only within certain programs and do not take in any strays anyway. Next we opt to try the one in Brunswick as that's where we're heading. Carrie gives them a call and, unfortunately truthfully reveals where we found the rat. They will not take in animals outside of their specified area.

A call to the Lewiston shelter confirms that they will take the rat, because we live within their specific range, and we decide to take advantage of their late hours to swing by after our planned trip. We make sure the rat has stuff to chew, air holes, and some soggy clover until we can get some tastier veggies from the restaurant.

We drop recycle stuff off at the recycle drop and head on to the restaurant. The waitress asks us how we're doing and Carrie mentions a bit of the adventure, still feeling a bit sore at the brusque treatment from the Brunswick shelter once it was revealed we were from outside the acceptable range. By coincidence the waitress's boyfriend has had rats before, and she was kind of thinking she'd like a pet rat, and they lived just a 15 minute walk away... When we leave the restaurant we walk her boyfriend to the car and turn the rat over to his new humans.

And the food we ate was really good too.

 We then go off to the flea market. I only buy one comicbook. I do find some books. I am very curious about the Zane Grey book, I only knew of his westerns. He's got a jungle adventure too! This was in a pile with three Tarzan books. I have them in paperback, but these were old (1917 & 1927) hardcovers. No prices on them and they weren't under glass or wrapped in plastic, so I figure I'll ask how much. I expect something along the lines of the prices I normally see, but they're at less than a tenth of what I thought they'd be. At or below the price I would pay for Tarzan paperbacks! One of these has lots of wonderful illustrations by J Allen St. John!

Carrie finds a number of interesting things, too, including pieces for a new prop she wants to build inspired by our photo shoot yesterday. And while at one vendor buying some goodies, the vendor turned to me and agreed on the low low counter offer I'd earlier made on the Phantom book he had.

Next stop was at the Goodwill store where, instead of the usual one if I'm lucky work shirt find, I got a week's worth.

If a black cat crosses your path it's bad luck. If a white rat crosses your path, it is apparently good luck.