I stayed home from school sick one day when I was about 14. I was in my room, reading a book or more likely playing video games, as a 14-year-old boy does while home sick. I became aware of a strange rhythmic sound, and when I investigated, I found my pet rat Funky hopping around his cage on his hind legs. Each time he landed, he impacted on his bedding with a crunchy thunk sound, and then he hopped right back up again.
I knew from experience that Funky was perfectly capable of jumping to impressive heights, but I had never once seen him hop around in this way, and there was something very strange about it. He was jumping over and over again, almost mechanically, as though he were possessed. It didn’t look right at all.
I reached in to take him out, and I was shocked to find that his body was ice-cold. I’ve never touched a dead body, but I imagine that it feels about the same. Then, still hopping, he started peeing, and it had an orange-ish color. I knew something was very, very wrong.
Not knowing what else to do, I ran and got an electric heating pad. I cleaned Funky off and then wrapped him in a towel, which I then wrapped in the heating pad. He was still acting like he was possessed, weakly pushing with his legs, but I held him tight and after a while he calmed down. I continued holding him, checking every once in a while to see if he was warming up, and it seemed that he was.
Finally, after what must have been 10 or 15 minutes, maybe longer, he felt normal to the touch, and he started acting like an ordinary rat again. I let him out of the towel and heating pad and he started crawling around, sniffing at things, engaging in the normal behaviors I was accustomed to. I cleaned his cage thoroughly, because I was worried about the orange urine and still clueless as to what could have caused the problem. I put him back in afterward and he seemed to be fine.
To this day, I have no idea what happened to my poor pet. He never acted like that again. I’ve never seen any other animal behave that way. Would he have died if I hadn’t been home sick that day? I’m not very superstitious, but that house was as close to cursed as I’d ever want to see in my life.
Read other answers by Nick Olson on Quora:
- What is the weirdest thing you have seen a child draw?
- As a teacher, what was the biggest facepalm moment you have experienced?
- What is it like to be a pickpocket? How does it work? Have you ever been caught?
from Quora http://ift.tt/2jIi2t1
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