NOTE: This is the FULL PIECE, originally published in the March/April 2019 issue of The Animals Voice magazine.
What is the legal statute of limitations in the state of California for Receipt of Stolen “Property”? (Read: animals are only property in the eyes of human supremacists; animals cannot and must not be considered property—this is non-negotiable.) Is that a three-year statute? Okay, so in that case we’ll say that this all happened five-plus years ago. Ish.
One night I was up in the mountains northeast of Los Angeles vacationing with a couple friends. They were out snowboarding—I was lying in bed reading because I’m crippled by nerve pain in both knees—when a completely unexpected call lit up my phone from an UNKNOWN number. These days I screen calls categorically. Too many debts and pissed off weirdos in my life. Plus I’ve, you know, served hard time in prison and been through the legal assgrinder of the American Injustice System. Without my trying, a reptilian part of me never stops fearing arrest and persecution. But back before all that it was different. Simpler . . . a time when breaking unjust laws felt so righteous that surely I’d never be held to account.
In other words, I actually answered the phone. It took me a moment to pin down the voice, but then I realized it was my acquaintance from the recent terrarium stakeout! (For obvious privacy reasons, I’ll call him/her/zir/etc. the androgynous name JESSE and refer to them as needed by the gender-neutral pronoun zir.) “Owow, holy shit!” I cried. “Uhm . . . hey there.” Something unsettling rustled through some obscure corridor of my brain, but I wasn’t able to keep a hint of awe from creeping into my voice: “Wait, how’d you get my num—”
“Not now,” s/he said with a breathless urgent quality suggesting the tachycardia of a very very recent adrenaline rush, and an intense one. “Can you meet me at the bottom of the mountain? It’s pretty serious.”
What? They knew where I was, too?! Maybe I mentioned it on Facebook or something . . . but I didn’t think so. No—almost certainly not, with a moment’s reflection. So now my own heart was racing. “The . . . bottom of the S____ Mountains?” Still in disbelief.
“Yes. Can you meet me?”
I glanced at a wall-mounted wooden clock—9:23. The guys must’ve gone out for food after snowboarding. “Right now?”
No whiff of hesitation: “Yes. As in, right now right now if possible.”
Butterflies began to thrash in my stomach, as if pounding their wings against my innards to try and free themselves. And I felt the intense rush that always ran through me when legitimate danger or trouble came, charging through my body like a shot of amphetamines. Illegality wasn’t the sole reason, but it did figure in.
I forced a miniscule pat of spittle down my throat. Lips, tongue, gums, all so dry. My words emerged brittle and timid. “Is this what I think it is?”
The caller’s pointed and deliberate silence told me everything needed. You know I can’t say anything over the phone. They wouldn’t be asking me to drive an hour-plus down the mountain if it weren’t something big. Really big.
“Okay, okay then. Understood.” I was already throwing my jacket on and grabbing my wallet and keys. “Out the door,” I said. We decided where to meet and I was gone.
The twisting, narrow drive down the mountain led me through a similarly complex and winding array of emotions. I should definitely mention that I was functionally oblivious to what lay waiting for me at the bottom. Holding only suspicions. The stakeout was about a week ago, and I hadn’t talked to my accomplice since we parted ways outside the property, both of us feeling a transcendent excitement.
This whole crazy thing had started so inauspiciously, too. I’d driven several hours from where I was living at the time to take a much-needed little vacation. Visiting some friends who lived far away—back when I could still do things like travel anytime I wanted without having to worry about even worse pain, even greater medication needs. It’s just become a big savage #clusterfucking ordeal as my chronic nerve pain condition grew ever more severe and debilitating (See Rebel Hell: Disabled Vegan Goes to Prison by Jan Smitowicz, 2017). I can hardly go out at all now.
I’d already suspected for several years by then that, someday, I would probably find myself doing something risky and/or illegal in service of advancing animals’ rights. A feeling in my gut that just . . . made sense.
Soon after going vegan in 2006 at the age of 21, I became a #brainthirsty and devoted student of ALL animal issues. I examined the dozens of different industries built on the backs of nonhuman suffering and death. Studied the animal advocacy movement’s history (which spanned back at least a couple hundred years, depending on your definition) like a grad student.
I consolidated and analyzed and ruminated on this vast new well of knowledge. And fast realized what must surely be the most eminently reasonable conclusion: These were extreme, calamitous problems. Truly unprecedented in scope when taken in toto. Solving such extreme problems would require extreme solutions. Immediate, radical direct action. Radical as in the Latin radix, which means “root.” I saw it with abundant clarity; humans and especially industrialized humans are a brutal, malignant force that imagines itself to be both superior to and utterly detached from anything and everything in nature. Acting like we can pillage and rape and plunder without the chickens (so to speak) eventually coming home to roost. At such a late stage—amid an anthropogenic mass extinction, and ever-worsening climate catastrophe that’ll soon be irreversible—actions that hack away at the trunk of the problem, or worse, the branches, rather than attacking the roots, may well be worse than no action at all. Any ideology that doesn’t include the annihilation of human supremacy will be utterly pointless within a few decades.
This main thread ran all through a discussion I had with a certain acquaintance the week prior to that night. We were planted in a corner booth at a beloved vegan restaurant. Speaking in hushed tones that thrummed with an undercurrent of danger, charged excitement. When Jesse accosted me halfway through my meal, I recognized zir immediately even though we’d only crossed paths a few times. We first met at an AR (animal rights) protest somewhere in coastal California, probably a couple years prior. But I have a quasi-photographic memory and it was clear to me, even prior to our intense conversation, that Jesse was hardcore. Not a pseudo radical. A serious one who wisely kept quiet in public but was willing to take huge risks in the shadows, jeopardizing zir freedom and wellbeing for the elevation of animal liberation.
Long ago I coined this phrase:
Actions Speak; Words?—Weak!
“Do you think,” Jesse said with what seemed like carefully measured insouciance, “that liberating animals these days is worthwhile? worth the risk? And I mean only liberating them, not throwing property destruction on top.”
I stared into Jesse’s face. Studied zir eyes. Was the question nothing but curiosity in a general sense, or was s/he asking for a specific reason? Was s/he trying to gauge my direct action–potential? Maybe s/he was already involved in such activities!—a prospect that, no matter how unlikely, still birthed a fluttering giddiness in my gut. Yet there was a certain terrifying possibility that I could never ever look past . . . Jesse could’ve been caught redhanded by the police for some crime and was now working for them as an informant, trying in abject cowardice to ensnare others in a trap of illegality—fallaciously desperate to save zir own ass by fucking somebody else’s.[1] Even a discussion about this could theoretically transition in the space of a mere sentence beyond the hypothetical and into that realm of extreme danger. Was I willing to take THAT risk?
Part of me had already by this point been yearning, painfully yearning, to step it up and act—in direct concrete fashion—with appropriately intense urgency commensurate to the #holocaustic level of calamity these issues demanded. Yearning in other words to engage in illegal direct action to help animals. So I decided to follow this conversation as far down the vivisected-rabbit hole as this person would lead me. But I’d also have to make another decision perhaps even more substantial. Could I trust this person? Would I be marching straight down the cattle chute toward an inevitable slaughter?
And—maybe most important of all—did it even matter if I were eventually caught and prosecuted, so long as I accomplished something major in the process?!
Jesse waited patiently for an answer, watching me.
“Of course it’s worthwhile, even if it costs them negligible money. Every individual is worthwhile. A rat, a rabbit, a guinea pig, a pig-pig, a chicken, they all deserve to be rescued. For their suffering to stop.”
My new friend was nodding along earnestly as I spoke. “Would you be interested, maybe, in seeing . . . something? In . . . checking something out?”
I dragged a hand across my face to hide a smile. Then quickly reminded myself that I, like Jesse, needed to retain plausible deniability. The grin and all traces of it evaporated. “That sounds pretty compelling.”
“Good.” S/he stood up and I followed out into the bright midday sunshine.
We walked for 15 or 20 minutes. Chatting casually about current events. “How do you feel about that new ‘animal protection’ law, that House Bill OOOOO or whatever?” S/he asked.[2]
Soon enough (at least given the not-too-horrible state of my knees’ pain at the time) we reached a cluster of several large buildings with a big cement parking structure. Walked onto the property, past a small cluster of reserved spaces. “Hmm,” I said quizzically. “Now what could you want to show me here?”
S/he just smiled. “Do you smoke?”
“Weed or cigarettes? Now before you answer let me just stop you right there, Jesse. Either way the answer is yes.”[3]
S/he produced a yellow pack of American Spirits, stuck one in their mouth and handed me another. “You’d be surprised,” s/he said, “how far smoking can get you in America.”
“Actually I would not be surprised,” I responded. Explaining how back in college I had done a bunch of undercover stockyard and dairy investigations wearing a hidden camera (see “Undercover in Dairy Land, CA” by Jan Smitowicz, The Animals Voice cover story, January 2014). And how I wasn’t at all a smoker back then but utilized it to access abnormal places, where I could stand around and investigate without eliciting too much suspicion. Smoking out in the open can, under the right circumstances, create a curious sort of dimness that facilitates freer movement. Served me well during that undercover work, truly.
Jesse and I continued strolling past one main building’s main entrance toward the back. Eking out our blatant cigarettes for as long as possible. “So you get it then,” s/he said. We came to a flight of stairs leading below street level and padded down them ever-so-slowly. Our shoes and clothes produced minute susurrations. Any noise that slight, though, undoubtedly got swallowed within a few short waves of sound by cars whipping past on a nearby road. The walkway led us between two white-stuccoed walls: a decent-sized building several stories high, and what seemed like a small structure with only one floor and a couple-few rooms at most. The latter featured no windows or orifices of any kind on the side we flanked. Despite running 25 or 30 feet in length. Strange?
Jesse stuck an arm out in front of my chest and we stopped. Several paces from where the corridor branched with a T-junction. I badly yearned to ask how and why I was chosen, but it was hardly the right time. Seemed like we were on the verge of seeing what we’d come here to see.
Our cigarettes were almost gone now. Jesse took both, snubbed them out, and then stuck the butts in a jeans pocket. Leave no trace and all that. “So when we get past this building,” s/he whispered, “we gotta be fast, cuz there’s one of those panoramic camera things a couple stories up, pointed this way.”
We flicked up the hoods on our sweaters and stared down at the ground so the camera, way up overhead, couldn’t catch our faces. Jesse zipped further down the corridor and I followed close behind. We turned and I felt the sudden colossal nakedness of being utterly exposed out in the open; could almost feel the all-seeing Camera Eye boring into my flesh, deciphering instantaneously not just my identity but my very thoughts. I shuddered. Then felt oh-so-grateful when we turned right again and reentered the small, single-story building’s “camera shadow.” Now a high chain-link fence rose on one side of the walkway. Fragrant eucalyptus trees and bushes blocked us from seeing anything else, which meant we couldn’t be seen either. I took a deep breath and shook my head nervously. Then I saw it. My mouth hung agape. A hinged door with a frosted windowpane near the top stood just a few steps farther up. A simple computer-printed sign was laminated and taped to the door. It read LIVE RESEARCH ANIMALS INSIDE.
“Hooooly fuck,” I managed to push out on an exhale. “Oh . . . oh wow.”
Jesse just nodded, eyes pinned on me. Smiling.
Soon we’d gone our separate ways and s/he said s/he’d get in touch if needed. Until Jesse called me to meet at the mountains’ base, I heard neither whisper nor word. My anxiety had been high for several days after our walking tour. But by the time I’d gone up into the mountains with my friends, I had largely succeeded in convincing myself nothing would happen.
Yet now, here I was, pulling into a gas station parking lot and looking for Jesse’s vehicle. It was parked around the back next to that increasingly rare Southern California feature: an open tract of wild land. A chilly breeze scented the air with fragrant sagebrush. My contact was standing there. I could feel my whole body wanting to jitterbug; my heart seemed lodged somewhere in my throat. Any moment I could be swarmed by police officers. Yet that barely occupied a tiny corner of my mind—if that. My primary concern wasn’t the danger. Believe it or not, I worried far more than anything else that my high expectations would be shattered. I wasn’t scared of the police . . . but I was terrified that I’d misjudged the situation, and there weren’t actually any liberated animals inside that car.
So I hurried over and peeked into the opaque back window through a scrim of dust and saw four matching, metal-wire-ceilinged plastic containers jammed together on the backseat floor. I ripped open the door and that unmistakable musky scent wafted out and even with high expectations my jaw dropped and my heart seemed to soar out my open mouth. Little pink noses poked up between the cages’ barred roofs in throngs. White fur shone like fresh snow and I could even make out, under the gas station’s buzzing sodium-arc streetlights, red eyes. Little pink hands pushed down other little white heads to hold themselves up for a better look at this new presence. Me. Full-body chills coursed through my body; gooseflesh rose so precipitously that I felt it happening. “Hoooly SHIT!” I couldn’t stop myself from hollering. I wanted to scream and cry and jump up and down and break things, so one big yawp seemed like a fair compromise. Every rat in the jam-packed containers was albino. Often known as “lab rats.” A disgusting moniker representing abhorrent larger worldviews against which, on at least this one fine night if nothing else, a blow had been stricken. A teardrop in the ocean, yes—yet what is the ocean but a great deal of drops?
Jesse told me a few things. At one point as the group headed down the stairs to the animal storage building, s/he became overwhelmed by the whole thing. Toxic anxiety flooded zir system, threatening to render zir paralyzed, useless. Or even worse: a liability. S/he paused on the steps, tachycardic, nearing hyperventilation. “Oh god, I can’t do this, whathefuck wutterwedoing I can’t do this can’t do—”
One of Jesse’s partners came right up and got in his/her face confidently, no hesitation, no uncertainty, and took hold of zir arms staring into zir eyes and said, with kindness but also firm surety, “Hey, hey! Listen to me, Jess. Animal liberation!”
As if by magic, those two simple words were all it took to snap zir out of it. S/he took deep long breaths and nodded with a wan smile. “Okay. Yeah, okay, you’re right.”
The rats had been granted nothing to eat inside the lab except for dry dog food, just piled into a V-shape in the containers’ lids. Jesse had already sex-segregated them to curtail the chance of pregnancy. There were about 60 of them—as many as they were able to safely take. S/he gave me a phone number and address for a sympathetic veterinarian a couple hours away who was expecting a visit the next afternoon. “And now I should probably hit the road. Sure you can handle it from here?”
I shrugged. We’d already discussed it after our recon at the lab. “I will handle it, because I have to.”
Jesse nodded. We moved the cages into my small car. They were absolutely filthy, mucked with grime on the inside and out. Again I wanted to ask, Why me? How? But it didn’t really matter, not in the material world. Those rats were all that mattered, and I would fling myself upon the responsibility and try not to question anything to which I simply could never know the answers. So I settled for saying, “Thank you. Thank you so much for trusting me.”
Stepping into zir car: “Don’t let us down.”
S/he drove off. Haven’t seen Jesse even one time since. All as it should be.
I left the mountains later that morning, a day earlier than planned. My buddies didn’t mind too much; now they could snowboard for another entire day and evening without feeling guilt (or pity) that my crippled ass had to stay in! nor would they any longer feel annoyance, and probably at some level guilt, at having to eschew (No Pun Intended) animal flesh and fluids in my presence—a non-negotiable tradeoff my nonvegan friends had to make if they wanted the extraordinary honor of Jan Smitowicz’s company, his goodwill, his #jantastic sparkling personality, and the robust benefits unerringly produced by mere proximity to Jan Smitowicz’s very high-IQ, very large (some people would even say very very large) . . . brain.[4]
Wasn’t an easy trick, but I managed to keep my friends unaware of what’d happened.
Early in the morning they loaded up their snowboarding gear and took off. I was still awake from the night before. So much to do, and too jacked on adrenaline and nerves for sleep anyway. I’d situated the rats in new, clean accommodations, with actual rat food and bedding and stuff to nibble on. Then it was back on the road and down the mountain once more. A couple-hour drive brought us, all 61 of us, to the veterinarian Jesse had told me to visit. This was just the second in a multitude of long journeys with copious amounts of “illegal property” aboard. Anxiety like you wouldn’t believe, every single time. Probably the nexus of what’d eventually become nerves of fucking steel (again, see my prison memoir Rebel Hell).
That vet was utterly amazing. Not a single nosy question, not even a hint of one-would-think-compulsory negative judgment—the precise opposite if anything. The rats were fine. Nothing wrong that was readily apparent. I’d just have to keep a close eye on them, watch for symptoms of sickness or injury. Can you even imagine how impossible it would’ve been if, say, all of them had been forcibly addicted to drugs[5], or filled with tumors like so many pebbles in an ankle sock?! (It wasn’t until much later that their health came tragically into question.) Luckily it’s pretty obvious to me that the rescuers did their due diligence. Be pretty shit if they liberated and passed on to me a bunch of terminally drug-addled or disease-ridden animals and peaced-out without even mentioning it!
From the vet I drove another several hours straight, through a bombastic sunset and into the evening. Hadn’t slept by then in well over 24 hours—last time I’d woken up was midafternoon the day before when I took a nap. Running on fumes to put it mildly. As if everything I’d been through already in that endless day weren’t sufficient #antikarma (that being, evidence for my conviction that karma is just as fake and silly and refutable and bullshit-#beshitted as any/every other religio-mystical inclination and implication), as if my frayed and frazzled nerves hadn’t caused enough psychological and leaden gastrointestinal trauma already, yet another shot of pure 100 percent fear shockwaved my system just a couple miles before arriving at a supportive friends’ house . . . suddenly appearing ahead on the road, augured by a precipitous bottlenecking of traffic, there was a “Sobriety Checkpoint” replete with multiple cop cars.
I considered turning around to take a different route, but it’d be best to not attract the slightest suspicion; I’d have to go in hard and confident. So straight onward I went, and when they asked if I’d had anything to drink it was Nossir, not at all, I actually never drink (true story), and when they inevitably saw the four large bins filled with animated scampering curious little animals, I help out with a small-animal rescue organization (technically also true!), these guys were being adopted out and I was transporting them.
Like I said—nerves of steel. But that absolutely 100 percent DOES NOT mean I’m unaffected by trauma. I’m just extremely good at pretending otherwise. Because once I finally arrived at a supportive friend’s place and we moved the ratties into the spare bedroom with me and I went back to being by myself with them, it ALL hit me. The awful, overwhelming reality of my situation came crashing down to obliterate the adrenalized wave of ecstasy I’d been riding hard. Only temporarily saved by the clobbering blow of exhausted unconsciousness.
Only allowed myself seven hours of sleep. Too much to do. Would you believe that second day might’ve been even worse than the prior clusterfuck? It’s true. I’d never, not once found myself caring for a rat. The only rodent experience I had was with our beloved dwarf hamsters when I was a wee lad. Talk about baptism by fire! Minus the silly religious theme of course. Because now I was surrounded, literally, by some five-dozen energetic, ecstatic, newly freed rats. Did my best—did a perfectly reasonable job. But man, oh man did it take a toll! I’d never felt more isolated and alone in my life. Probably surpassed only by some of the hardest stretches of incarceration. My girlfriend at the time was stuck dog sitting for her dad and couldn’t get away until the next day, no matter how badly she wanted to help. My friend sympathized but couldn’t possibly miss work. I only went to them out of a feeling of utter necessity; definitely didn’t want to involve anyone else. Then again, I could just fabricate a story . . .
Turns out I wish I’d never even tried to seek help from most fellow “activists.” Might’ve allowed me to maintain some tiny quantity of knowingly self-deluded optimism. Instead it pushed me faster to where I’d long been headed: total misanthropic cynicism (which in this world today is just another way of saying ruthlessly honest realism.)
Before I’d gotten halfway through calling a dozen or so people I’d considered allies and/or friends, I was literally sickened by the barefaced Parade of Bullshit Excuses flagrantly trotted out before me. I didn’t mention that whole illegally-liberated-from-a-lab thing—but I did make sure to convey strongly, in no uncertain terms, the desperation and urgency of the situation. Claiming that a small rural shelter in another part of the state had been inundated with pets refugeed by the rash of wildfires that’d broken out like hives on the Earth’s skin, wreaking havoc up and down massive swaths of California. I made it abundantly clear that the ratties were in tremendous need of foster homes, because I (“perhaps ill-advisedly, I’ll admit it!”) took in 60 of them so they wouldn’t be euthanized. I made it abundantly clear that I was in waaaaayyy way over my head.
That whole business was not exactly my proudest moment. The ambiguity juxtaposed simultaneously with shameful obsequious pleas for help; the subtle but well-noticeable reality that whether they realized it or not I was prostrating myself before them, nakedly subject to social and political and moral and yes even legal judgment if my assessments of character were wrong—wrong at any single point along the timeline at which I couldn’t or didn’t avoid implicating myself in illegal activity; even the lying bothered me at some level. Probably because I wanted to scream what’d happened from the rooftops, to write this very article (although it would’ve lacked a variety of hard-earned tools in my lexical bag o’ tricks, certain degrees of élan and je ne sais quoi and probably some other French words as well), to go on television and explain to the world why it’d been done, why it was not only justifiable but proactively moral, everything and anything that would bring attention to the plight of animals, all animals. Indeed—lying about this was fucking hard. Keeping it secret for years and years. Just shitty. Hell, even my then–partner, who ended up helping out with the rats an unquantifiable amount, and became an utterly phenomenal rattie-caregiver, was never allowed to know they were survivors of vivisection.
I knew all of it, every lie small and enormous, every last plea for help, all of it was absolutely necessary . . . no equivocation no exception. Didn’t make it any less miserable. Also decided it’d be extremely wise to come as close as possible to LITERALLY CONVINCING MYSELF that the rats really actually did come from a shelter overwhelmed by the very real wildfires; best to LITERALLY CONSTRUCT A DETAILED FALSE NARRATIVE IN MY HEAD and insist that my brain incorporate this false reality as fact, then urge it to cannibalize the real memories; the real fake story about going to some rural shelter in the Central Valley’s Kern County or whatever, stopping in on a whim, stumbling upon five dozen rats whose rodent-rescuing widower guardian lost his house and was facing an indeterminate hospitalization for smoke inhalation, burns, and possible burgeoning PTSD, and one of the well-meaning paramedics who’d attended to him made sure to get all his rats to the local shelter—who of course had been nearly buried alive in refugee pets largely due to shitbag “guardians” who didn’t prioritize their pets’ lives the same way they would any other family member, and left those poor nonhumans behind when they fled the encroaching conflagration, and the shelter had taken in just as many pets as they possibly could, and then took in another several dozen, and they simply didn’t have the space or time or money to care for another five dozen rats, and so they were going to be euthanized, but OH MY GAWD, HOLY SHIT! no I couldn’t possibly let that happen and so I left with every last one from the batch formerly belonging to that poor beleaguered widower. I’m a writer, a novelist primarily; I spent two years in prison, where obfuscation and illusion, masked emotions and fabricated tales are more prevalent in number than blades of grass in its rec yard; at one point I was something of a career criminal, no matter how justifiable my actions may’ve been, and I had to act like one and think like one; I flip that switch and become something almost less than human—or perhaps not less-than but simply other-than—that allows me to deal with hostile people, with dangerous situations, with getting pulled over in possession of felony items in felonious quality, and cruise onward unscathed; that allows me to watch (RECORD) men loading pigs into a slaughter truck, booting them savagely again and again, screaming, jabbing them with electric cattle-prods—and not even really see it. Out of necessity. This is not the Jan I am, but the Man I become when I choose to approach the extreme edges of this worlds’ madness. You too might be surprised by what you’re capable of when you DECIDE that you must, must do something, and you’ll either succeed or destroy yourself in the attempt.
That’s all well and good. Terrific. Beautiful! A trifle unsettling, sure, but so what? Thing is, none of that matters, none of it, if you’re involved in something that requires a dependence on other humanoids to succeed. I’d mostly just misjudged—grossly misjudged—the amount of support I’d end up seeing. Almost every person I contacted by phone, pleading with them to take even just a couple rats (no way I’d separate one of them from every single other individual who was with them in that ghastly place), slid a hand into their asshole and extracted a big heaping pile of vegan shit in response. “So can you take any, even just a couple, or do you have any friends who might be able to?” is what I built to with every call. Sorry but no, so many of them said, often in immediate retort with nary a breath’s worth of actual consideration. I’d love to help, really would, but I just can’t. I’ll let you know if I think of someone though! Cool, THANKS! go eat balls. I found/find it really goddamn hard to believe that these outwardly hardcore animal rights people, many of whom outright claimed to “Support the ALF” with Facebook posts, t-shirts, rhetoric, and the like, couldn’t even find a way to adopt two fucking ratties, and couldn’t even be arsed to so much as consider if they had any friends who might help!
That all had me riled up enough. And then, first day of the rest of those rats’ lives, and my own, ended in a fortissimo fuckaroo that seemed to provide a perfect cap on the entire day. A foul, rotten cherry atop the shitcake that left me a useless and depleted emotional Dumpster fire. I was just right on the edge of the breakdown cliff and the slightest nudge would send me plummeting off. Then a shrill, shockingly loud squealing erupted from one of the cages. If you’ve heard the sound you’d know: it was a rat shriek. I rushed over and immediately saw snow white fur on multiple bodies stained crimson and panic slapped me stupid and desperate and terrified and I opened the cage and stuck my hand in with no thought of getting chomped on I just had to make that sound stop; I took hold of the poor girl who was freaking out and saw she’d somehow lost a nail and it was bleeding like crazy. The pulp-colored bedding looked Jackson-Pollacked with red paint. I cried out wordlessly. My friend was home, but I was insisting they stay out of the room. Didn’t want them involved in any way. But now, well, it just seemed like so much blood, and the poor girl was still frantic, so I rushed out of the room and found my friend in the backyard, cupping the rattie to my chest, my bloodstained white t-shirt. “Hey,” I called, trying so hard to sound casual. But my voice warbled. “Hey she seems to be bleeding a lot I think her toenail got ripped off Idunnowhattado-isshegonnabe—”
“Whoaaa, Jan, it’s okay!” I’d broken down sobbing, a blubbering incoherent mess. They folded me in an embrace. “They’re really adept at dealing with stuff like that, it’s not nearly the same as if it happened to us. Super tough.”
“Really?” Hiccup. Sniff. Deep breath. “You think it’s . . . not a . . . big deal?”
“No, it’s not. Look, the bleeding’s already practically stopped.”
I looked and s/he was right. The little sweetheart had licked the wounded toe and now seemed to’ve moved on with her life—dealt with the problem and then forgotten about it—as she was now licking one of her front paws and meticulously preening at her fur, licking and rubbing, and slowly the red splotches faded. Get hurt, take care of it, move on.
Still—60 rats. I fed them and refilled their water bottles and hung out with them for a while. Soon I was nodding out. I lay down and turned off the light. The nocturnal creatures started running around and playing and crunching on food and banging around. I ended up crying myself to sleep. So alone. So so damn alone and overwhelmed.
Thank Earth—don’t know what I would’ve done if that stress level had continued unabated!—the next day things started to move in a much better direction. My girlfriend was able to come stay with me and help take care of them and support me. The burden-reduction was drastic. She took to the rats immediately; my best friend and lover and partner adored them with a fierce devotion; and I had to trick her about the horrifying place from whence those lovely, remarkable little individuals came. She’ll only truly know what happened if she reads this piece.
She seemed to instinctively understand how to care for them. It was an omen of things to come. Her arrival seemed to turn almost everything around, in fact, because soon I talked to several different people who were super helpful and not only grasped the situation’s magnitude but acted like it. Imagine that! Before the end of that calendar day, a couple different people adopted some ratties and I hooked up with a woman an hour away who did small animal rescue and was more than happy to take fifteen of them. A third of them cleared out into good homes in what seemed like one fell swoop!
Time passed, as it is wont to do. Little by little, and sometimes in nice big bunches, we adopted out all but fifteen. Took care of those guys and girls and in the process fell utterly head over heels in love with rats as nonhuman companions. They were so incredibly sweet and adorable and curious and intelligent . . . any time we stood at the cages and they were awake, they’d invariably watch, sniffing at the air and often raising themselves up higher on their back legs—standing upright. Using their tails for balance. Whenever we reached in and picked one up, their tails would instinctually loop tight around your wrist and forearm. Not quite with the remarkable dexterity of monkeys’ tails—but still really neat and fascinating.
Finally, a month later we were down to five rats—three girls and two boys, big fatty-rat boys—and we decided we could totally handle that many. Not just adequately care for them but be able to take care of vet bills if needed. We’d also fallen for each and every individual one of the last five, each with their own unique personalities and predilections. Ronnie Lee went apeshit for broccoli (*video code/link?). The girls, especially Isa Chandra Moskowhiskers, devoured banana chunks bigger than their heads with reckless abandon. Undeniable glee. It turns out that simply watching rats eat is straight-up one of the most exquisitely adorable things you’ve likely ever seen. Certainly, was for us; we’d stare transfixed at them chowing down, grinning and laughing at their goofy behavior. Even though we never gave one a treat without treating everyone, it was like they couldn’t stand to wait. Soon as they detected a chunk of fruit or veggies at or coming toward the cage, they’d bolt over and reach through the bars, strrrrrretching, their tiny hands oh-so-humanlike, noses pebble-sized and pink like bubblegum, twitching back and forth. Once the treat was close enough, they’d snag it like a purse-snatcher, yanking it inside and then darting off to find somewhere less exposed in the hopes of avoiding their housemates. Sometimes one would try to sneak up after finishing their own munchies and greedily try to steal someone else’s. This usually led to a wrestling tussle almost painfully cute. If they got a little too carried away, squealing in high-pitched frustration, we’d make forceful lip-smacking noises to startle and then distract them as they tried to determine what the hell was happening.
Always keeping the sexes segregated (a knowledgeable rescuer friend once told us a male could impregnate a female in just three or four seconds; I was for some reason unimpressed—seemed reasonable enough to me!), we brought them out to hang on the bed with us every day. Sometimes they’d spend an hour or more walking around incessantly, stopping only to sniff at the air on their hind legs with hands curled limply at their chests like tiny T-rex arms. Other times, within five minutes they would crawl deep inside one of the pillowcases, sandwiching themselves between pillow-corner and fabric. Ronnie Lee—and Rod, too—were super bulky, chubby little boys. So when doing the latter, they’d visibly protrude every time from the pillowcase; to the point where they stretched the fabric tight enough that you could easily trace the shapes of their bodies.
Some of our Fab Five passed away far toward the lower end of average life expectancy. Rod Coratnado and one of the three girls, Haseep Sotsky (moniker taken from one of the hysterical spam email “sender” names we seemed inundated with during the period), only lasted a year or so after rescue. Both of the boys had chronic respiratory issues—depressingly common among rats in general. We had to put the poor angels inside a plastic cage and “nebulize” them with medicine every single night for 20 to 30 minutes, a machine connected with a hose that ran to the sealed cage and fogged it up to near-total opacity. Necessary, the best thing for them, but still upsetting each and every time. Rod’s death may well’ve been the most sudden and unexpected of all . . . and yet at the same time, it probably has to be considered the most instructive and amazing one.
One day he woke up and out of nowhere was quite sick. Lethargic and uncoordinated and uninterested in any kind of food. I was already at work when my girlfriend realized. She would keep him by her side the entire day, taking him along nestled in her Sea Shepherd hoodie’s pocket any time she had to go out. He’d shown no signs of improvement by that evening. We would take him to the vet in the morning if he still wasn’t feeling well. After dinner, we were hanging out in the living room. I sat in a rolling chair and my girlfriend on the couch. Rod was wrapped in a comfy blanket resting on the opposite side of the couch from her. Suddenly he dragged himself out to walk; the first time he’d really moved in several hours. He made his way slowly to my girlfriend. “Hey, maybe he’s feeling a little better!” she said, surprised at his relative energy. He managed to hop up onto her lap. “Oh hai, sweetheart!” She rubbed the soft fur atop his head. Then he collapsed. Glassy-eyed and sucking for air. We jumped up and rushed toward the nearest vet’s office. But Rod stopped breathing before we made it even a mile. He was dead. But he’d roused himself, with who-knows how much difficulty and pain, to go over and say goodbye to his human Mom. There was absolutely no doubt whatsoever in our minds.
Valerie met a terrible and challenging fate—either from simple bad luck or, more likely, because lab rats are, thanks to shitbag vivisectors (meaning every single one of them, each complicit, each committing personal atrocities and contributing to a related mass atrocity), quite often extremely inbred genetically, and so are far more susceptible to a host of illnesses. Valerie sure the hell felt the effects. Within a mere six months or so of living with us, the problems started. Over the following months and year she racked up more and more vet visits; she lost ever greater swaths of fur until only scattered tufts remained as islands surrounded by pink skin covered in sores; she developed unremovable tumors that grew ever larger, her life ending with multiple lumps bigger than large purple grapes, among other smaller ones. It was sickening to see it happen. All of it, to all of them: fucking sick. Nobody could ever deserve it less. They made exceptional companions.
In fact, I never even imagined what terrific adopted pets rats would make. So many wonderful traits, and so incredibly easy to care for compared to the average domesticated nonhuman. They’re super fun to watch. Adorably goofy and unique. They’re sweet and funny and intelligent and affectionate. Just awesome, awesome companion animals.
Those poor darlings’ short lives were filled to near-capacity with love and affection though. The bonds we formed with each one was incredible. The whole experience turned us into rat lovers and rescuers for life. We’ve shared our lives with dozens of them by now, and it’s carried over into both separate relationships after we broke up: my wife has become a huge rat lover as well, and we’ve rescued many. They’ve traveled literally many thousands of miles with me and us on road rips; my guy, Romeo, by himself has seen far more of California than most residents no doubt have. From the desert basins of the south like Anza-Borrego and Death Valley to the Eastern Sierra and Mono Lake and Mammoth to the wondrous redwood forests of the North Coast. He was also, for a number of months, almost a sort of unofficial mascot for antivivisection protests in Los Angeles at places like LAX and UCLA and Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade. Amusing kind of ironic tidbit: during my first antivivisection protest at my alma mater, UC Irvine, Ronnie Lee—himself a survivor of that Wicked Institution—stood on my shoulder and in my sweater pocket the entire time. It was something of an uplifting sort of fuck-you statement, even if I was the only one (until now!) who knew it.
Looking back, I can say with no equivocation or reservation that the liberation of those rats didn’t just save them from a life of suffering and horrible needless deaths. It also changed the lives of everyone who spent time with those rats. And it saved us . . . saved from lives lacking the singular enrichment that ratties can provide. They gave us just as much as we gave them—simply by being their awesome nonhuman selves. I’m forever grateful.
And I’m forever grateful to those brave souls who took it upon themselves to find out what was being done to animals in their vicinity, and fucking did something about it. Something big and beautiful and concrete and non-symbolic. I hope whoever those people were, they’re still going strong. As the characters in my (eventually)-to-be-published novels Strong Hearts and Strong Hearts Forward say . . .
LIBERATE, UNTIL THE DAY WE DIE!
LIBERATE!—OUR CEASELESS FREEDOM CRY.
Enjoy that piece and(/or) want to support my work? Check out my poignant, enthralling, darkly funny prison memoir REBEL HELL: Disabled Vegan Goes to Prison (and other books) by clicking HERE . Thanks so much for reading!
[1][1] This isn’t even a shade of paranoia; see, for example, Green is the New Red by Will Potter, Operation Bite Back by Dean Kuipers, and really any analysis of the “Green Scare” written from a perspective sympathetic to animals or the environment.
[2] That’s called REDACTION, right FBI? Thought you were gonna catch me giving away the time period of these events? Ha! Please. We know how to play this game too 🙂 Also, fuck you.
[3] Relax, I quit over a year ago. Cigarettes that is. Terrible habit—yes, I’m a stupid person.
[4] I’ll just leave this here . . .
“(Only) 35 of the Stupidest Donald Trump Quotes”—
www.tatler.com/article/donald-trump-worst-quotes
[5] UCLA professor-torturers , in just one example, have been “studying” what in the world possibly happens when you forcibly addict various species of animals to drugs, like nicotine & cocaine & CRYSTAL METH.
See www.ProgressForScience.com
IMMENSE GRATITUDE to The Animals Voice magazine for graciously allowing me to republish the piece here in its entirety. Respect!
