Did I tell you guys about my Thanksgiving Day adventure? No, I don’t think I did.

First of all, nobody go ratting me out to PETA. Second of all, I just made a clever pun, but that won’t be evident until later, so just remember to laugh about it when it becomes apparent there was some fancy wordplay at the beginning of this story.

Mr. Jemock, the two Jemocklettes and I went to my sister’s house for Thanksgiving. Yes, the same sister with the bad Toni home perm in the Christmas pictures I posted earlier. We were sitting around, busily digesting our food when I noticed a cat sitting on her front porch, just outside the glass storm door. I made an astute observational comment about it: “What is that cat doing?” and everybody turned away from their digestion activities to look at it. Jemockson said “It looks like it’s stalking something.” Jemockette said “I think I just saw something in those bushes there!”

At the exact moment we were all looking out the glass door, a new player entered the game. A big old hairy greasy field rat came up to the door and sat up on its beefy haunches and started scratching at the glass in a way that communicated to us, the casual observers, that the rat wanted inside with us, in a bad way. scritch scritch scratch HEY LET ME IN scritchscritchscratch

We were all stocked up on rat at the moment, so we did not roll out the red-carpeted rodent wheel for that abomination on tiny clawed feet. My apologies to all rat enthusiasts--I just can’t get behind that particular agent of petocracy.

The rat, which was easily half as big as the stalker cat, kept scratching at the door, even after it had to put down its little suitcases and teeny-tiny AAA travel guide, and it was freaking us out. Everybody was running around yelling “DON’T LET IT IN DON’T LET IT IN” like there was one amongst us who was seriously considering hosting a rodent for our traditional after-dinner jigsaw puzzle deathmatch.

So my sister, who had to defend her homestead, and Jemockson, a second year law student who recognized a tort waiting to happen, decided to drive off the invading force. Armed with the Jemock family weapon of choice -- brooms -- they went out the back door and attacked from the front, slapping the ground with the brooms and scaring the crap out of the neighbor cat who decided forthwith that dinner out of a can would be just fine and hightailed it back home.

That left the rat, two humans and two brooms. Jemockette was videotaping the whole thing with her phone. Mr. Jemock and I were directing from the sidelines.

WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP went the brooms! EEK EEK EEK went the broom handlers! The rat was all “OMG WTF CUT IT OUT” and was jumping from porch to sidewalk to bushes and my sister and Jemockson were doing that fancy spirited high-stepping Rat in the Vicinity dance move, trying their best to whack the snot out of that varmit. You know the move I’m talking about. OMG I nearly busted a gut I was laughing so hard.

Eventually I saw the rat run across the yard and across the street into a vacant field, but I didn’t inform the Broominators of that development for a few minutes.

Was that wrong of me? Heh.