Dead rat paparazzo

Saturday night we are welcomed at our house by a dead rat. It is lying in the middle of the road, on its side, as if lounging, its tail spectacularly long. 'Don't park here,' my wife says. 'I don't want to see it.' I park a little further down the street. Meanwhile, a man with an explosion of grey hair is getting out of his car, leaving the door open and lights on, walks toward the dead rat and starts taking pictures. As my wife tries to unsee the dead rat, to think it away, on her way to our front door, I cannot resist saying to the dead rat paparazzo: 'Thanks for taking it off the street, sir.' His reply: 'It's a dead rat!' 'Yep. Thanks for cleaning it up.' Later I feel obliged to clean it up myself, so I take a spade and go back into the night. The dead rat paparazzo is gone. The dead rat is not – its body lifeless but beautifully intact. I scoop it up carefully, still somehow expecting it to wake up and run off, and shove it in the dumpster. A proper rat burial, I suppose.