Crossing the Rat Man

It all seemed harmless at first. I came home one day and there was a cauliflower and a note on my front porch. “I had an extra one, and I didn’t want it to go to waste. Hope you like cauliflower. Your backyard neighbor, Jim.”

I thought, “How sweet.” The cauliflower looked to be in pristine condition, still in its original packaging. I took it inside and cooked it up with some cheese sauce. It was delicious.

I didn’t know Jim very well. He was a bit of a character, but seemed harmless enough. He lived in the garage apartment behind my house, and was the handyman and rent collector for the two story apartment building next to it. I must admit that he was my motivation for putting up a privacy fence. Every time I’d go into my back yard there he’d be, sitting in his yard. Never causing trouble or making noise. Not staring at me or anything. Just there. Always there.

After that first gift, something would show up on my porch once or twice a week. Always vegetables. I have to give Jim credit for introducing me to parsnips. We never spoke. I’d wave as he rode past on his bicycle, but he’d never stop. I didn’t think too much of it.

In retrospect, this was an amazing amount of trust to put on a total stranger. But this was 20 years ago, and I liked that feeling of small town neighborliness in the midst of a big city. And heaven knows I could always use more veggies in my diet.

But then things started to get a little weird. The quality of the vegetables seemed to deteriorate over time, so slowly that I didn’t really notice at first. Maybe the packaging would be a little sticky. Then it would be closer and closer to being past the point of edibility. Then I began having to just transfer the stuff directly from the porch to the trash can.

Then one day I came home to a paper plate with three eggs resting on it. And the eggs looked dirty. And this was the first time something wasn’t in its original packaging. “Right, then. This has got to stop.” But what to do? I didn’t want to hurt the guys feelings. He was trying to be nice.

That day my bug spray guy stopped by for his quarterly visit, and I mentioned the situation to him. He also happened to have the account for the apartment building. He said that none of the tenants liked Jim. He gave them the creeps. They didn’t know why, other than the fact that he would say strange stuff. But they were trying to get the landlord to get rid of him.

He also told me that Jim liked to dumpster dive behind the grocery stores. When he said that, I nearly vomited. Had this guy been giving me dumpster produce all along? Oh my God.

I figured I had a few days before his next “delivery”, so I decided to come up with some sort of note. Maybe I’d say my doctor had me on a strict diet, and I therefore couldn’t accept any more of his food. Yeah, I admit it. I’m a wimp.

But before I could even leave the note on my porch, I came home to a carton of ice cream. Obviously it had been sitting there for quite some time, because it had melted out, and I was treated to a huge chocolate puddle all over my welcome mat. That was the last straw. I kicked the mess off the porch, mat and all, went inside, wrote the note and taped it to my door.

The next day I received a letter from Jim. It was a long rambling furious rant telling me that I shouldn’t trust my doctor and that I was ungrateful, and that his food was perfectly healthy, etc. Fortunately I never heard from Jim again. But that’s probably because of what happened next.

A few days later I was watching the news and there was Jim. Turns out the absentee landlord had stopped by and discovered that Jim was hoarding hundreds of rats in cages in his little apartment. Jim told the folks at animal control that he was a scientist and that the rats were his friends, and he was conducting benevolent experiments on them for a scholarly paper that he was writing. He was (and I still can’t believe this) ordered to release the rats into the woods outside of the city.

I may have been hypervigilant after that, but I could swear I saw an increase in rats in the neighborhood. What I never saw again was any trace of Jim or his vegetables, and that was just fine with me.

Beware of Greeks bearing gifts, as the saying goes.

Parsnips. (Image credit: yumsugar.com)

Author: The View from a Drawbridge

I have been a bridgetender since 2001, and gives me plenty of time to think and observe the world. View all posts by The View from a Drawbridge