Oscar Rat's Secret Missions

Oscar Rat's Secret Missions

  A collection of his stories ( 14,000 words ) By

  Oscar Rat

  With very little help from

  Charlie Thrun

  Recounting the Brave Rodent's

  Missions for the White House

  * * * * *

  PUBLISHED BY:

  Oscar rat's Secret Missions

  Copyright © 2012 by Oscar Rat

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  The author would much appreciate contributions of excess food to

  needy rodents under your home and behind your refrigerator.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  My good friend, a virtual rodent named Oscar Rat, has worked at the White House for two Presidents. As Rodent Troubleshooter and Advisor, he has immediate entry to the Oval Office. In fact, with his gnawing abilities they can't keep him out. This missive includes virtually true stories of several secret missions the rat conducted. They were to influence native rodents in the Middle East. Namely Iran, Iraq, Georgia, and Azerbaijann.

  Included here are three representative tales of Oscar's adventures in the Middle East.

  Charlie Thrun, his best ( maybe only ) human friend.

  ====

  1. Remembering Raena Al-Ratwan -- Iraq before the last war there.

  ====

  Having a day off from my job as a writer for the venerable Rat Archives, I thought I'd lie around the house watching my wife, Malodor, do housework. I rather enjoy watching that luscious fluffy black-and-white tail swishing around while dusting furniture. As the rat of the house, I take every opportunity to instruct her on the correct way to do the dishes and other menial activities.

  Women can get into stupid habits if a guy doesn't occasionally pay attention to the puttering around they call work. It's not as though they have to do much. I find Malodor tries to impress me on those occasions, stretching out the little bit of labor housework actually encompasses. My wife has no idea of the real work a male has to do to support a household.

  Normally, I let her have her little foibles. Looking up from my computer, I saw her glancing back at me, a frown on her furry face. Knowing that lovely skunk's thinking process, I knew I had to get out before she tried to get me to help with something. A real rat does NOT do housework. Not when he has a wife.

  When she turned back to the stove to check the pizza sauce for dinner, I slipped out the front door.

  Since my human buddy, Charlie, down the hall, had his door open and could be counted on for a free drink or three, I stopped in to see him.

  Scampering inside, I saw him bent over his kitchen table. Jumping onto a chair, then the table, I landed on a pile of postage stamps. Now why, I thought, should a human idiot be playing with them things? I noticed they were used, yet. Worthless.

  "Don't stomp around, Oscar. I'm sorting them out."

  "They're wet," I observed. Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice would say. "What good are wet, used, postage stamps?"

  "It's a hobby. I sent away for these on E-Bay," he explained the unexplainable. "They came on pieces of envelope. I had to soak them in water to get the stamps off."

  "Yeah? Sure. But why?"

  "For the fun of it. See, I glue them into books, in series and by country."

  I shrugged. Humans sometimes do strange things. A guy has to get used to their erratic thinking. Finding a clear spot, I settled down to watch him screwing around with those squares of paper. "What good are they? You don't cook and eat them, do you? In soup or something?"

  "Quiet, Oscar. You'd never understand. Hobbies are something humans do, and rats don't do."

  "We rats have more sense than to screw around with useless objects and for useless reasons. If I can't eat it, use it for something or sell it, I don't want it."

  "Hey! Look what I found. You seen anything like this before?" Charlie asked, holding out a piece of microfilm about a half-inch square -- wi ... with a pur ... purple and yellow striped border.

  No frickin' way. It couldn't be, could it? What are the odds, billions to one? I had to hold back a bowel movement, knowing crapping on the table would get me evicted.

  "Can I see it?" I asked, dazed at the prospect.

  "Keep it if you want. It's not a stamp," he told me.

  "Maybe I will. It ... it might look good stuck on my computer at home," I lied. While he continued sorting stamps, I made an excuse and scampered back home. Although it was probably not the vital microfilm that could have avoided a war that's killed over a million people, I had to find out for certain. That border was a dead giveaway. It could have come from my own microfilm camera; the one Dickie gave me for secret missions when he was in the White House. Of course, other American spies carried the same model, so it could be anything. Anything at all.

  "Oscar, honey," Malodor called, seeing me coming in, "I need you to help clean behind the stove."

  Heart beating so loud I barely heard her, I hurried to my computer. First, I scanned the film into memory, then brought a picture of it up. The program enlarged and enhanced the photo to a point where I could read it with a magnifying glass. Some of the words weren't too clear -- especially at the right edge where the doctor hadn't held the camera straight, but I could read enough to validate the page. Beyond all chance and reasoning, I had found lost proof that could have avoided the war with Iraq.

  "Oscar. Get your ratty ass over here to help me, right now." I looked up, tears flowing, to see my wife standing over me, tail raised as though ready to spray.

  "Please, Malodor ... baby. I really need some time by myself. I really do." The words came out in anguished sobs. Eyes wide, she backed off.

  "What is it, Oscar? Can I help?"

  "I can't tell you. It has to do with when I worked for Georgie and Dickie. A national security thing."

  "Well. That's finished. Those two can't hurt you anymore. They took advantage of you, honey. They took advantage of a lot of people." Seeing my face, she continued, "I see you want to be alone. I have to get my tail curled anyway. I'll be back when I'm finished." A minute later, I heard the front door close.

  Alone, I put my head down on the desk and sobbed, out of control. My mind went back to that fateful mission, the first I'd made for Dickie....

  "Me and Georgie want you to go to Iraq, Oscar," Dickie told me while loading and unloading his office shotgun. It was the sawed-off one he kept under his desk, not the Winchester on the wall or the larger one in the closet. Sometimes I'd have to duck as he swung the barrel in my direction. "I have an F-16 waiting to fly you there. Your mission is to find out, for once and for all, whether Saddam has those WMDs hidden away." I could see rage mounting in his eyes, making them bug out a full inch. "If they do, we'll kill all those damned Towel-Heads."

  "Uh ... and if they don't?" I asked, humbled by his size and furious manner.

  "That's the wonder of using acronyms like WMD. Since there's no clear definition, I can always change the meaning while keeping the initials." He grinned down at me. "You're bound to find something that will kill a lot of people. After all, we gave them that stuff. Our Iraqi spies have been keeping track of each shell and bomb, so we know they have some left over from bombing the I
ranians and Kurds and Wheys over there."

  "If you already have spies, Dickie, why me?"

  "Cause we don't trust them bastards. A rat ... a patriotic American rat, can get in and get us real proof that will be believed."

  Within an hour, I was outfitted with a rodent-sized flight suit, along with other equipment like an, ugh, parachute. I'd never used one of those before. I was also given a camera that took microfilm pictures and a small .11 caliber pistol. The gun was for use against other rodents. The expert who gave it to me said I could try to shoot up a human nose or at the inner corner of an eye socket -- that it might work.

  Oh! And I was given a shaded flashlight to use in contacting our rodent spy. Us guys can see in infrared spectrum’s not visible to humans. I was told it would be a female rodent and given a password. They didn't want to compromise our agent if I was caught on the ground before I could get to her. Let me tell you, as it was my first mission I was petrified -- especially about the idea of jumping out of a speeding fighter jet.