Rat Trap Quotes

A trap is only a trap if you don't know about it. If you know about it, it's a challenge.

Comfort is your biggest trap and coming out of comfort zone your biggest challenge.

one had better die fighting against injustice than to die like a dog or a rat in a trap

I dare say it is rather hard to be a rat,” she mused. “Nobody likes you. People jump and run away and scream out: ‘Oh, a horrid rat!’ I shouldn’t like people to scream and jump and say: ‘Oh, a horrid Sara!’ the moment they saw me, and set traps for me, and pretend they were dinner. It’s so different to be a sparrow. But nobody asked this rat if he wanted to be a rat when he was made. Nobody said: ‘Wouldn’t you rather be a sparrow?

This is what I think. Addiction is just a way of trying to get at something else. Something bigger. Call it transcendence if you want, but it's a fucked-up way, like a rat in a maze. We all want the same thing. We all have this hole. The thing you want offers relief, but it's a trap.

We tell our children they're trapped like rats on a doomed, bankrupt, gangster-haunted planet with dwindling resources, with nothing to look forward to but rising sea levels and imminent mass extinctions, then raise a disapproving eyebrow when, in response, they dress in black, cut themselves with razors, starve themselves, gorge themselves, or kill one another.

The only cheese I have in the apartment is a wedge of Brie in the refrigerator and before leaving I place the entire slice--it’s a really big rat--along with a sun-dried tomato and a sprinkling of dill, delicately on the trap, setting it.

The terror ran endlessly on in his mind, making him feel like a rat trapped on an exercise wheel. And when he tried to look ahead to some better, brighter time, he could see only darkness.

What can it profit a man to gain the whole world and to come to his property with a gastric ulcer, a blown prostate and bifocals?Mack and the boys avoid the trap, walk around the poison, step over the noose while a generation of trapped,, poisoned, and trussed-up men scream at them and call them no-goods, come to bad ends, blot-on-the town-thieves, rascals, bums. Our Father who art in nature, who has given the gift of survival to the coyote, the common brown rat, the English sparrow, the house fly and the moth, must have a great and overwhelming love for no-goods and blots-on-the town and bums,, and Mack and the boys. Virtues and graces and laziness and zest. Our Father who art in nature.

I recommend to young people to seek work for what they will learn, more than what they will earn. Look down the road at what skills they want to acquire before choosing a specific profession and before getting trapped in the Rat Race.

You touched me more than once with tenderness and I never mistook it for affection. I know the code of miserable people. I was the rat trap for your loneliness. And the rat. And the loneliness. See how much poison I can swallow when it’s hand-fed?

For there is a growing apprehension that existence is a rat-race in a trap: living organisms, including people,are merely tubes which put things in at one end and let them out at the other, which both keeps them doing it and in the long run wears them out. So to keep the farce going, the tubes find ways of making new tubes, which also put things in at one end and let them out at the other. At the input end they even develop ganglia of nerves called brains, with eyes and ears, so that they can more easily scrounge around for things to swallow. As and when they get enough to eat, they use up their surplus energy by wiggling in complicated patterns, making all sorts of noises by blowing air in and out of the input hole, and gathering together in groups to fight with other groups. In time, the tubes grow such an abundance of attached appliances that they are hardly recognizable as mere tubes, and they manage to do this in a staggering variety of forms. There is a vague rule not to eat tubes of your own form, but in general there is serious competition as to who is going to be the top type of tube. All this seems marvelously futile, and yet, when you begin to think about it, it begins to be more marvelous than futile. Indeed, it seems extremely odd.

The insane asylum on Blackwell's Island is a human rat-trap. It is easy to get in, but once there it is impossible to get out.

Experiments show that a free rat will instinctively work to free another rat trapped inside a plastic bottle. But once that free rat has been allowed to self-administer heroin, it is no longer interested in helping out the caged rat, presumably too caught up in an opioid haze to care about a fellow member of its species.

How its heart beats! How it struggles to get away! As we do, Paul. As we do. We think we know so much, but we really don’t know any more than a rat in a trap—a rat with a broken back that thinks it still wants to live.

I dare say it is rather hard to be a rat," she mused. "Nobody likes you. People jump and run away and scream out, 'Oh, a horrid rat!' I shouldn't like people to scream and jump and say, 'Oh, a horrid Sara!' the moment they saw me. And set traps for me, and pretend they were dinner.

When a rat sneaks in, there’s no way of getting rid of it. You give it poison, and it eats it. You set up a rat trap, and it shits on it. A rat is the most difficult thing in the world to get rid of. Because rats are cowards. Because they hide. Because they think they’re cleverer than you.

For eight years I was an inmate in a state asylum for the insane. During those years I passed through such unbearable terror that I deteriorated into a wild, frightened creature intent only on survival. And I survived. I was raped by orderlies, gnawed on by rats and poisoned by tainted food. I was chained in padded cells, strapped into strait-jackets and half-drowned in ice baths. And I survived. The asylum itself was a steel trap, and I was not released from its jaws alive and victorious. I crawled out mutilated, whimpering and terribly alone. But I did survive.

How its heart beats! How it struggles to get away! As we do, Paul. As we do. We think we know so much, but we really don’t know any more than a rat in a trap—a

Wise people choose battles carefully, the way a rat nibbles around a trap. What doesn't kill you doesn't always make you stronger. Sometimes, they leave you maimed, scarred and lacklustre.

We are irrational in our species-​specific devotions. I know a man who won’t eat octopus because of its intelligence. Yet he eats pork and buys glue traps for rats, though rats and pigs are highly intelligent, likely more intelligent—​I’m guessing, for I have not seen the SAT scores—​than octopuses. Why, for that matter, is intelligence the scale by which we decide whom to spare? Or size? Have the simple and the small less right to live?

If you want to see philosophy in action, pay a visit to a robo-rat laboratory. A robo-rat is a run-ofthe-mill rat with a twist: scientists have implanted electrodes into the sensory and reward areas in the rat’s brain. This enables the scientists to manoeuvre the rat by remote control. After short training sessions, researchers have managed not only to make the rats turn left or right, but also to climb ladders, sniff around garbage piles, and do things that rats normally dislike, such as jumping from great heights. Armies and corporations show keen interest in the robo-rats, hoping they could prove useful in many tasks and situations. For example, robo-rats could help detect survivors trapped under collapsed buildings, locate bombs and booby traps, and map underground tunnels and caves. Animal-welfare activists have voiced concern about the suffering such experiments inflict on the rats. Professor Sanjiv Talwar of the State University of New York, one of the leading robo-rat researchers, has dismissed these concerns, arguing that the rats actually enjoy the experiments. After all, explains Talwar, the rats ‘work for pleasure’ and when the electrodes stimulate the reward centre in their brain, ‘the rat feels Nirvana’. To the best of our understanding, the rat doesn’t feel that somebody else controls her, and she doesn’t feel that she is being coerced to do something against her will. When Professor Talwar presses the remote control, the rat wants to move to the left, which is why she moves to the left. When the professor presses another switch, the rat wants to climb a ladder, which is why she climbs the ladder. After all, the rat’s desires are nothing but a pattern of firing neurons. What does it matter whether the neurons are firing because they are stimulated by other neurons, or because they are stimulated by transplanted electrodes connected to Professor Talwar’s remote control? If you asked the rat about it, she might well have told you, ‘Sure I have free will! Look, I want to turn left – and I turn left. I want to climb a ladder – and I climb a ladder. Doesn’t that prove that I have free will?

Hardly had the light been extinguished, when a peculiar trembling began to affect the netting under which the three children lay. It consisted of a multitude of dull scratches which produced a metallic sound, as if claws and teeth were gnawing at the copper wire. This was accompanied by all sorts of little piercing cries. The little five-year-old boy, on hearing this hubbub overhead, and chilled with terror, jogged his brother's elbow; but the elder brother had already shut his peepers, as Gavroche had ordered. Then the little one, who could no longer control his terror, questioned Gavroche, but in a very low tone, and with bated breath:-- "Sir?" "Hey?" said Gavroche, who had just closed his eyes. "What is that?" "It's the rats," replied Gavroche. And he laid his head down on the mat again. The rats, in fact, who swarmed by thousands in the carcass of the elephant, and who were the living black spots which we have already mentioned, had been held in awe by the flame of the candle, so long as it had been lighted; but as soon as the cavern, which was the same as their city, had returned to darkness, scenting what the good story-teller Perrault calls "fresh meat," they had hurled themselves in throngs on Gavroche's tent, had climbed to the top of it, and had begun to bite the meshes as though seeking to pierce this new-fangled trap. Still the little one could not sleep. "Sir?" he began again. "Hey?" said Gavroche. "What are rats?" "They are mice." This explanation reassured the child a little. He had seen white mice in the course of his life, and he was not afraid of them. Nevertheless, he lifted up his voice once more. "Sir?" "Hey?" said Gavroche again. "Why don't you have a cat?" "I did have one," replied Gavroche, "I brought one here, but they ate her." This second explanation undid the work of the first, and the little fellow began to tremble again. The dialogue between him and Gavroche began again for the fourth time:-- "Monsieur?" "Hey?" "Who was it that was eaten?" "The cat." "And who ate the cat?" "The rats." "The mice?" "Yes, the rats." The child, in consternation, dismayed at the thought of mice which ate cats, pursued:-- "Sir, would those mice eat us?" "Wouldn't they just!" ejaculated Gavroche. The child's terror had reached its climax. But Gavroche added:-- "Don't be afraid. They can't get in. And besides, I'm here! Here, catch hold of my hand. Hold your tongue and shut your peepers!

HECTOR Well, I don't mean to be drowned like a rat in a trap. I still have the will to live. What am I to do? CAPT. SHOTOVER Do? Nothing simpler. Learn your business as an Englishman. HECTOR And what may my business as an Englishman be, pray? CAPT. SHOTOVER Navigation. Learn it and live; or leave it and be damned.

IN the morning we went up to the village and bought a wire rat-trap and fetched it down, and unstopped the best rat-hole, and in about an hour we had fifteen of the bulliest kind of ones; and then we took it and put it in a safe place under Aunt Sally's bed. But while we was gone for spiders little Thomas Franklin Benjamin Jefferson Elexander Phelps found it there, and opened the door of it to see if the rats would come out, and they did; and Aunt Sally she come in, and when we got back she was a- standing on top of the bed raising Cain, and the rats was doing what they could to keep off the dull times for her. So she took and dusted us both with the hickry, and we was as much as two hours catching another fifteen or sixteen, drat that meddlesome cub, and they warn't the likeliest, nuther, because the first haul was the pick of the flock. I never see a likelier lot of rats than what that first haul was.

Was it possible to have an apartment sprayed for evil spirits like one would for bugs, or set up traps like for those big, city rats?

it's better to die fighting than to die like a rat in a trap.

We have a rat and possum problem, so the only thing you’ll see on your sliver of path is dead rats and possums stuck in the traps Dad places every few weeks.

everyone looks up like rats caught in a spotlight eating the brains of a friend dead in a trap.

The rats that were trapped alone in cages opted to get high as much as possible, but the rats with interesting lives (community, space, toys) tried the drugged water once or twice, and then stayed away from it. The rats with lives worth living had little interest in the escapism the drugs offered. Overall, they consumed less than a quarter of the drugged water the isolated rats did. None overdosed or ignored food until they starved.

Mack and the boys, too, spinning in their orbits. They are the Virtues, the Graces, the Beauties of the hurried mangled craziness of Monterey and the cosmic Monterey where men in fear and hunger destroy their stomachs in the fight to secure certain food, where men hungering for love destroy everthing lovable about them. Mack and the boys are the Beauties, the Virtues, the Graces. In a world ruled by tigers with ulcers, rutted by strictured bulls, scavenged by blind jackals, Mack and the boys dine delicately with the tigers, fondle the frantic heifers, and wrap up the crumbs to feed the sea gulls of Cannery Row. What can it profit a man to gain the whole world and come to his property with a gastric ulcer, a blown prostate, and bifocals? Mack and the boys avoid the trap, walk around the poison, step over the noose while a generation of trapped, poisoned, and trussed-up men scream at them and call them no-goods, come-to-bad-ends, blots-on-the-town, thieves, rascals, bums. Our father who art in nature, who has given the gift of survival to the coyote, the common brown rat, the English sparrow, the house fly and the moth, must have a great and overwhelming love for no-goods and blots-on-the-town and bums, and Mack and the boys. Virtues and graces and laziness and zest. Our Father who art in nature.

But how do we get men and women before they are hunted like foxes and trapped like rats and treated like ants to understand the concept of unity, working, building, living together? It seems the Black National Anthem is If it’s broke, don’t fix it.

rats?” “I just said that.” “But the attic is clean.” “Well, okay, we’ve got tidy rats!” “No rats.” “Karl, I heard them last night.” “Maybe plumbing,” Karl probed; “maybe boards.” “Maybe rats! Will you buy the damn traps and quit arguing?” Bustling away, Karl, said, “Yes! I go now!” “No not now, Karl! The

I was six when I first saw kittens drown. Dan Taggart pitched them, ‘the scraggy wee shits’, Into a bucket; a frail metal sound, Soft paws scraping like mad. But their tiny din Was soon soused. They were slung on the snout Of the pump and the water pumped in. ‘Sure isn’t it better for them now?’ Dan said. Like wet gloves they bobbed and shone till he sluiced Them out on the dunghill, glossy and dead. Suddenly frightened, for days I sadly hung Round the yard, watching the three sogged remains Turn mealy and crisp as old summer dung Until I forgot them. But the fear came back When Dan trapped big rats, snared rabbits, shot crows Or, with a sickening tug, pulled old hens’ necks. Still, living displaces false sentiments And now, when shrill pups are prodded to drown, I just shrug, ‘Bloody pups’. It makes sense: ‘Prevention of cruelty’ talk cuts ice in town Where they consider death unnatural, But on well-run farms pests have to be kept down.

maybe pick it up by mistake with the cleaning?” “It is there.” “With the cleaning?” “In the closet.” “No, it isn’t. I looked.” About to speak, Willie tightened her lips and scowled. Karl had walked in. “Good evening, Madam.” He went to the sink for a glass of water. “Did you set those traps?” asked Chris. “No rats.” “Did you set them?” “I set them, of course, but the attic is clean.” “Tell me, how

In Flemish bond, headers alternate with stretchers from brick to brick. Flemish bond is much more popular than English, not because it is stronger, but because it is more economical since every facade has more long faces than short ones, and thus requires fewer bricks. But there were many other patterns—Chinese bond, Dearne’s bond, English garden-wall bond, cross bond, rat-trap bond, monk bond, flying bond, and so on—each signifying a different configuration of headers and stretchers.

NO, WE DO NOT HAVE PENS! Bring your own. You'll need them. You see, like every other department in the city, Records runs on Almighty Forms. There are forms that tell the Night Mayor's office what we hunters are doing - starting an investigation, ending one, or reaching various points along the way. There are forms that make things happen, from installing rat traps to getting lab work done. There are forms with which to requisition peep-hunting equipment, from tiger cages to Tasers. (The form for commandeering a genuine NYC garbage truck may be thirty-four pages long, but one day I will think of some reason to fill it out, I swear to you.) There are even forms that activate other forms or switch them off, that cause other forms to mutate, thus bringing newly formed forms into the world. Put together, all these forms are the vast spiral of information that defines us, guides our growth, and makes sure our future looks like our past - they are the DNA of the Night Watch.

When we get down to potential versus reality in relationships, we often see disappointment, not successful achievement. In the Church, if someone creates nuclear fallout in a calling, they are often released or reassigned quickly. Unfortunately, we do not have that luxury when we marry. So many of us have experienced this sad realization in the first weeks of our marriages. For example, we realized that our partner was not going to live up to his/her potential and give generously to the partnership. While fighting the mounting feelings of betrayal, we watched our new spouses claim a right to behave any way they desired, often at our expense. Most of us made the "best" of a truly awful situation but felt like a rat trapped in maze. We raised a family, played our role, and hoped that someday things would change if we did our part. It didn't happen, but we were not allowed the luxury of reassigning or releasing our mates from poor stewardship as a spouse or parent. We were stuck until we lost all hope and reached for the unthinkable: divorce. Reality is simple for some. Those who stay happily married (the key word here is happily are the ones who grew and felt companionship from the first days of marriage. Both had the integrity and dedication to insure its success. For those of us who are divorced, tracing back to those same early days, potential disappeared and reality reared its ugly head. All we could feel, after a sealing for "time and all eternity," was bound in an unholy snare. Take the time to examine the reality of who your sweetheart really is. What do they accomplish by natural instinct and ability? What do you like/dislike about them? Can you live with all the collective weaknesses and create a happy, viable union? Are you both committed to making each other happy? Do you respect each other's agency, and are you both encouraging and eager to see the two of you grow as individuals and as a team? Do you both talk-the-talk and walk-the-walk? Or do you love them and hope they'll change once you're married to them? Chances are that if the answer to any of these questions are "sorta," you are embracing their potential and not their reality. You may also be embracing your own potential to endure issues that may not be appropriate sacrifices at this stage in your life. No one changes without the internal impetus and drive to do so. Not for love or money. . . . We are complex creatures, and although we are trained to see the "good" in everyone, it is to our benefit to embrace realism when it comes to finding our "soul mate." It won't get much better than what you have in your relationship right now.

Sometimes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are presented as a hunting expeditions (“As British close in on Basra, Iraqis scurry away”; “Terror hunt snares twenty-five”; and “Net closes around Bin Laden”) with enemy bases as animal nests (“Pakistanis give up on lair of Osama”; “Terror nest in Fallujah is attacked”) from which the prey must be driven out (“Why Bin Laden is so difficult to smoke out”; “America’s new dilemma: how to smoke Bin Laden out from caves”). We need to trap the animal (“Trap may net Taliban chief”; “FBI terror sting nets mosque leaders”) and lock it in a cage (“Even locked in a cage, Saddam poses serious danger”). Sometimes the enemy is a ravening predator (“Chained beast—shackled Saddam dragged to court”), or a monster (“The terrorism monster”; “Of monsters and Muslims”), while at other times he is a pesky rodent (“Americans cleared out rat’s nest in Afghanistan”; “Hussein’s rat hole”), a venomous snake (“The viper awaits”; “Former Arab power is ‘poisonous snake’”), an insect (“Iraqi forces find ‘hornet’s nest’ in Fallujah”; “Operation desert pest”; “Terrorists, like rats and cockroaches, skulk in the dark”), or even a disease organism (“Al Qaeda mutating like a virus”; “Only Muslim leaders can remove spreading cancer of Islamic terrorism”). In any case, they reproduce at an alarming rate (“Iraq breeding suicide killers”; “Continent a breeding ground for radical Islam”).

Well, it had been a good many years since I had thought myself very lovable, and I escaped to some degree this trap of shattered ego. I was lucky; I had found a village of people so poor and simple, so engaging, that I had been more interested in my feelings for them than in what they thought of me. And frankly, after eighteen years of farming in the Sacramento Valley, that terrible life-consuming rat race, I was desperate enough to accept almost any human relationship on almost any terms. Love is love, I decided. Just take it and don't analyze it away. "You're my friend; you're good; you give me pennies," some nameless kid from down the beach told me. My God, what is love in this whorehouse world of poverty? And was I shocked because I could buy love or because I could buy it with pennies?

As I started to set out the traps, one would pop before the next one was set. I caught over two hundred mice the first night! As I went to bed that night, I could hardly sleep from the anticipation of the next day’s hunt. I’d persuaded my dad to put me in a tree blind by myself while he entertained the out-of-town hunters in another tree blind about five hundred yards away. I also couldn’t sleep because I heard mice scurrying all over the trailer. As I finally started to close my eyes, I heard quite a commotion from my dad, who was sleeping in a bunk below me. Then I heard a loud thud against the wall. “Danged rat was trying to build a nest in my beard,” he said. “He needs to find somewhere else to build a nest.” My dad and I started laughing. “We’re going to need some more mousetraps, Jase,” he said.

Somehow, I get seated halfway down the table from her. I am trapped next to this young techno-optimist guy. He explains that current technology will no longer seem strange when the generation who didn’t grow up with it finally ages out of the conversation. Dies, I think he means. His point is that eventually all those who are unnerved by what is falling away will be gone, and after that, there won’t be any more talk of what has been lost, only of what has been gained. But wait, that sounds bad to me. Doesn’t that mean if we end up somewhere we don’t want to be, we can’t retrace our steps? He ignores this, blurs right past me to list all the ways he and his kind have changed the world and will change the world. He tells me that smart houses are coming, that soon everything in our lives will be hooked up to the internet of things, blah, blah, blah, and we will be connected through social media to every other person in the world. He asks me what my favored platforms are. I explain that I don’t use any of them because they make me feel too squirrley. Or not exactly squirrley, more like a rat who can’t stop pushing a lever. Pellet of affection! Pellet of rage! Please, please, my pretty! He looks at me and I can see him calculating all the large and small ways I am trying to prevent the future. “Well, good luck with that, I guess,“ he says.

The Book I am thinking about would not be religious in the usual sense, but it would have to discuss many things with which religions have been concerned—the universe and man’s place in it, the mysterious center of experience which we call “I myself,” the problems of life and love, pain and death, and the whole question of whether existence has meaning in any sense of the word. For there is a growing apprehension that existence is a rat-race in a trap: living organisms, including people, are merely tubes which put things in at one end and let them out at the other, which both keeps them doing it and in the long run wears them out. So to keep the farce going, the tubes find ways of making new tubes, which also put things in at one end and let them out at the other. At the input end they even develop ganglia of nerves called brains, with eyes and ears, so that they can more easily scrounge around for things to swallow. As and when they get enough to eat, they use up their surplus energy by wiggling in complicated patterns, making all sorts of noises by blowing air in and out of the input hole, and gathering together in groups to fight with other groups. In time, the tubes grow such an abundance of attached appliances that they are hardly recognizable as mere tubes, and they manage to do this in a staggering variety of forms. There is a vague rule not to eat tubes of your own form, but in general there is serious competition as to who is going to be the top type of tube. All this seems marvelously futile, and yet, when you begin to think about it, it begins to be more marvelous than futile. Indeed, it seems extremely odd.

Story time. In September of 1869, there was a terrible fire at the Avondale coal mine near Plymouth, Pennsylvania. Over 100 coal miners lost their lives. Horrific conditions and safety standards were blamed for the disaster. It wasn’t the first accident. Hundreds of miners died in these mines every year. And those that didn’t, lived in squalor. Children as young as eight worked day in and out. They broke their bodies and gave their lives for nothing but scraps. That day of the fire, as thousands of workers and family members gathered outside the mine to watch the bodies of their friends and loved ones brought to the surface, a man named John Siney stood atop one of the carts and shouted to the crowd: Men, if you must die with your boots on, die for your families, your homes, your country, but do not longer consent to die, like rats in a trap, for those who have no more interest in you than in the pick you dig with. That day, thousands of coal miners came together to unionize. That organization, the Workingmen’s Benevolent Association, managed to fight, for a few years at least, to raise safety standards for the mines by calling strikes and attempting to force safety legislation. ... Until 1875, when the union was obliterated by the mine owners. Why was the union broken so easily? Because they were out in the open. They were playing by the rules. How can you win a deliberately unfair game when the rules are written by your opponent? The answer is you can’t. You will never win. Not as long as you follow their arbitrary guidelines. This is a new lesson to me. She’s been teaching me so many things, about who I am. About what I am. What I really am. About what must be done. Anyway, during this same time, it is alleged a separate, more militant group of individuals had formed in secret. The Molly Maguires. Named after a widow in Ireland who fought against predatory landlords, the coal workers of Pennsylvania became something a little more proactive, supposedly assassinating over two dozen coal mine supervisors and managers. ... Until Pinkerton agents, hired by the same mine owners, infiltrated the group and discovered their identities. Several of the alleged Mollies ended up publicly hanged. Others disappeared. You get the picture. So, that’s another type of secret society. The yeah-we’re-terrorists-but-we-strongly-feel-we’re-justified-and-fuck-you-if-you-don’t-agree society. So, what’s the moral of this little history lesson? This sort of thing happens all day, every day across the universe. It happens in Big Ways, and it happens in little ways, too. The strong stomp on the weak. The weak fight back, usually within the boundaries of the rat trap they find themselves confined. They almost always remain firmly stomped. But sometimes, the weak gather in secret. They make plans. They work outside the system to effect change. Like the Mollies, they usually end up just as stomped as everyone else. But that’s just life. At least they fucking tried. They died with their boots on, as much as I hate that expression. They died with their boots on for their people, their family, not for some rich, nameless organization that gives no shits whether they live or die. Or go extinct. Or are trapped for a millennia after they’re done being used. In my opinion, that’s the only type of society that’s worth joining, worth fighting for. Sure, you’re probably gonna die. But if you find yourself in such a position where such an organization is necessary, what do you have to lose? How can you look at yourself if you don’t do everything you can? And that brings us to the door you’re standing in front of right now. What does all this have to do with what you’re going to find on the other side? Nothing!

For there is a growing apprehension that existence is a rat-race in a trap: living organisms, including people, are merely tubes which put things in at one end and let them out at the other, which both keeps them doing it and in the long run wears them out. So to keep the farce going, the tubes find ways of making new tubes, which also put things in at one end and let them out at the other. At the input end they even develop ganglia of nerves called brains, with eyes and ears, so that they can more easily scrounge around for things to swallow.

Gone, at least for the moment, was his view of the Holy One as a man swatting flies or trapping rats in the stable or flying into a temper as savage as any Assyrian king’s. Gone too was the notion of the Holy One keeping score so exactingly that not even the angels could escape the severest penalties. In place of all this, at least for as long as it took him to go back into the house, he thought about how the Holy One, blessed be he, wishes the world and its creatures nothing but well. He thought also how, though never condoning the shadows that dwell in the human heart, he is forever dispatching angels of light to deal with them mercifully.

Rat Trap Haiku 'Hmm, 12 by 13, 4 by 9. Oy! You call this rat trap an apartment?

Ian Lipkin and his colleagues at Columbia University trapped 133 rats in New York City and discovered 18 new species of viruses that are closely related to human pathogens.

Trapped children, like trapped rats, need close management.

A man can no more be made into a rat-catcher by giving him a rat trap than he can become a soldier by being provided with a rifle.

Unfortunately, rat reduction did not provide the high road to plague eradication. Both fertile and intelligent, the rodents rebounded from the assault and even learned to avoid the bait, rendering the traps and their poison an ever-diminishing asset. A further serious complication was that the Hindu population, believing in the sanctity of animal life, stubbornly resisted killing rats and freed them from traps.

Ian Lipkin and his colleagues at Columbia University trapped 133 rats in New York City and discovered 18 new species of viruses that are closely related to human pathogens. In another study in Bangladesh, they examined a bat called the Indian flying fox and tried to identify every single virus that calls it home. They identified 55 species, 50 of which are new to science.

there is a growing apprehension that existence is a rat-race in a trap: living organisms, including people, are merely tubes which put things in at one end and let them out at the other, which both keeps them doing it and in the long run wears them out. So to keep the farce going, the tubes find ways of making new tubes, which also put things in at one end and let them out at the other.

A bus drives past and I’m nauseated by a whiff of exhaust. Then rotting fish. The rancid stench of sewage. Is it garbage day? I’m trapped in the pungent fog, in the dreary suburban-style shops, the rat race of city life. The city, even on the west coast, has the power to beat us down, to suck us of passion, to crush our dreams.

Because marriage is supposed to make you happy, not make you feel like a rat trapped in a very glamorous cage with twenty-thousand dollar silk draperies.

Shelly looked around the jamb again as though whatever animal that had been terrorizing her had a weapon. “That doesn’t look like typical rat shit. You may be right. This needs to be handled right now. You’re a lesbian, get in there and do battle.” “What does being gay have to do with trapping a squirrel?” “Two women live together, who kills the vermin?” Shelly asked with a hand on her hip. “The pest control people, that’s who.” “Butch up and get your ass in there. I won’t tell anyone if you scream like a five-year-old girl.” “I’m a femme lesbian, which puts me in the same class as you.” Ryann pointed to her face. “Note the makeup. Besides, you were the one who always played in the dirt and rode horses.” “There weren’t any squirrels in that dirt with me! I’ll pick up a bug or a frog, I even handled a grass snake once, but I do not deal with rodents.” Ryann leaned against the doorjamb and stared into the room. “It’s most likely under the couch. Where’s Grant?” “After-school detention for piercing his and the noses of his friends with pushpins.” Ryann stared at her in horror. “What is wrong with your kids?

Well, go in,” said Pandora. “It’s open to the public.” “So, for once, we won’t have to destroy private property,” Uncle Mort said, opening the door. “Look how far we’ve come, gang—” A shriveled, bony fist punched him in the face. Since there wasn’t much force behind the blow, however, it just sort of shoved him off balance for a second. Uncle Mort rubbed his cheek, as if he’d been stung by a mosquito. “Ow.” “Don’t you dare come in here!” a little man in a bow tie and suspenders yelled. He stared out at them from behind a pair of humongous old-man glasses, his wispy white hairs quivering as he shouted. When the Juniors came in anyway, he got even angrier. “Don’t you dare take another step!” They took another step. “Don’t you dare—” “Turlington!” Pandora blared, holding up a balled fist of her own. “You shut that pie hole of yours or I’ll stuff it with a hearty slice of knuckle cobbler!” “Knuckle cobbler?” Lex whispered to Driggs. “Good name for a band,” he replied. The man almost fainted. “Pan—Pandora?” “Damn straight!” She puffed out her chest and trapped him up against the wall. “Now, you’re going to let these friends of mine bunk here for the evening, and you’re going to be real nice and real pleasant about it, and above all, you’re not even going to think of ratting us out. Got it?” “Yes, yes,” he said, shaking. “Whatever you need. I think I might even have some pillows and blankets left over from the last overnight camp, in the closet behind the—” Pandora karate-chopped the side of his head. The Juniors watched as he went down like a sack. “What’d you do that for?” Uncle Mort asked once the poor man stopped twitching. “He would have ratted,” Pandora said with confidence. “Old Turly was my partner for a brief stint back in our younger days. Thick as thieves, we were. But he’s a squirrelly bastard, I know that much.” “So are you,” Uncle Mort pointed out. “That’s why we were such good friends!” Uncle Mort stared at her for a moment more, then rubbed his eyes. “Okay. Fine. Make yourselves at home, kids. Just step right on over the unconscious senior citizen.

She watched the children and he watched her face as she tried to process everything she had just learned. She was innocent; that was true. But there was intelligence in those large eyes. She picked up things very, very quickly. It was more than Aladdin could usually say about those who weren't Street Rats. What a waste, for some father to trap such a smart, interesting girl behind a garden gate, like a prized animal...

This short story is a rat trap strapped to your face as you descend to the depths of Dante's 'Inferno' while being entertained by hooded throat singers chanting 'stairway to heaven' on your way to a candle lit blind date with cthulhu himself. This story should have never been written. You should probably never read it, and it will probably be banned soon due to its traumatizing effect on the mind, but...there is a happy ending.

All snakes are deadly. And there're only two kinds. Cobras and rattlesnakes," she said stoically. "Oh, come on. There's a million kinds of snakes and more that are harmless than the bad kind." "Nope, this is where we disagree. If it's not a rattlesnake then it's a cobra and I want them all dead. I don't care if it upsets Mother Nature's plan for the earth. I don't care if there's an overflow of mice. I'll buy rat traps or let my cat, Patches, in the house to eat them. Snakes are horrible and I hate them

In the more immediate case, the charmed visitor's deliverance came when Nate lowered his face against the cold tile and Zero had ‒ with the surprising ease of a single determined tug against his zip-line tight leash ‒ toppled the chair to which he had been secured. It clattered loudly as he dragged it across the floor for several feet until the looped handle slipped off the now horizontal left upper knob of the back support; immediately after which the fixated feline joined his owner by inserting his much smaller head as far underneath the narrow gap at the cabinet's base as it would fit and his neck could stretch. He began to virtually mimic the rhythm of Nate's mop maneuver by alternately extending his left, then his right paw ‒ as Twitch likewise scurried from the kitchen side to the far corner ‒ sliding each in turn; alternating back and forth across the tile as if they were shortish, furry, clawed windshield wipers. For good measure, he repeatedly hissed and then growled menacingly in the direction of his quarry; finally sending the unwitting intruder scurrying once again; directly to the left of his pursuers, who ‒ despite being quite synchronized in their movements ‒ had been working at cross-purposes. During his hurried effort to return to his feet, Nate momentarily lost his balance and realized even as he righted himself, that this had provided the fleet-footed rodent all the time needed to evade his trap and bolt out the left crevice. It was in precisely this instant that his rat's luck really kicked in. Rather than escaping through any number of open spaces at the front or on either side and surely leading to a three way race that would have favored Zero heavily ‒ Twitch instead ran alongside the wall, where he became quickly immobilized between the back left cabinet leg and granite baseboard rising behind it. His twitching whiskers and wiggling nose had reached the side crevice that minutes earlier tantalized him with impending passage to the freedom of the open floor. However, by then a zealous greeting in the form of a crouched Zero awaited instead.

Whole world was nothing but a big rattrap. It set baits for people by offering riches and joys, shelter and food, heat and clothing exactly as the rattrap offered cheese and pork. As soon as anyone let himself be tempted to touch the bait, the rattrap closed in on him, and then everything came to an end.

Whole world was nothing but a big rattrap. It set baits for people by offering riches and joys, shelter and food, heat and clothing exactly as the rattrap offered cheese and pork. As soon as anyone let himself be tempted to touch the bait, the rattrap closed in on him, and then everything came to an end.

Mack and the boys avoid the trap, walk around the poison, step over the noose while a generation of trapped, poisoned, and trussed-up men scream at them and call them no-goods, come-to-bad-ends, blots-on-the-town, thieves, rascals, bums. Our Father who art in nature, who has given the gift of survival to the coyote, the common brown rat, the English sparrow, the house fly and the moth, must have a great and overwhelming love for no-goods and blots-on-the-town and bums, and Mack and the boys. Virtues and graces and laziness and zest. Our Father who art in nature.

Cindy and I walked to the outskirts of town. When we arrived, we realized that with the new wall in place, we were basically trapped inside like rats in a maze.

As his career blossomed, Campbell became one of the most respected nutritional biochemists in the world. A scientist with a diversity of research interests, Campbell was particularly interested in the connection between toxic chemicals and cancer. As fate would have it, he happened upon an obscure research paper, published in India, reporting on a study in which rats exposed to a Class IA carcinogen (aflatoxin) were fed either a 5 percent protein diet or a 20 percent protein diet. Campbell found himself puzzled by the results, which were completely counterintuitive: Every single rat fed the 20 percent protein diet developed liver cancer or its precursor lesions, whereas not a single animal fed the 5 percent protein diet developed liver cancer or a precursor lesion!

Exterminators refer to old rats as Moby Dicks. “Rats that survive to the age of four are the wisest and the most cynical beasts on earth,” one exterminator says. “A trap means nothing to them, no matter how skillfully set. They just kick it around until it snaps; then they eat the bait. And they can detect poisoned bait a yard off. I believe some of them can read. If you get a few Moby Dicks in your house, there are just two things you can do: you can wait for them to die, or you can burn your house down and start all over again.

Excellent work, Watson. The Rats have found the Trap.

Even Miss Blackburn was heartily sick of the road by the time the muddied carriage at last drew up outside Lady Bridlington’s house in Park Street. She was sufficiently well acquainted with the metropolis to feel no interest in the various sounds and sights which had made Arabella forget her boredom and her fidgets from the moment that the carriage reached Islington. These, to a young lady who had never seen a larger town than York in her life, were at once enthralling and bewildering. The traffic made her feel giddy, and the noise of post-bells, of wheels on the cobbled streets, and the shrill cries of itinerant vendors of coals, brick-dust, door-mats, and rat-traps quite deafened her.

Instead I recommend to young people to seek work for what they will learn, more than what they will earn. Look down the road at what; skills they want to acquire before choosing a specific profession and before getting trapped in the "Rat Race.

During the Blitz of 1940–1941, for example, as German bombs rained down on London, isolated populations of Culex mosquitoes were confined to the air-raid tunnel shelters of the Underground Tube along with the city’s resilient citizens. These trapped mosquitoes quickly adapted to feed on mice, rats, and humans instead of birds and are now a species of mosquito distinct from their aboveground parental counterparts.* What should have taken thousands of years of evolution was accomplished by these mining sapper mosquitoes in less than one hundred years. “In another 100 years time,” jokes Richard Jones, former president of the British Entomological and Natural History Society, “there may be separate Circle Line, Metropolitan Line and Jubilee Line mosquito species in the tunnels below London.

Bartal placed one rat in an enclosure, where it encountered a small transparent container, a bit like a jelly jar. Squeezed inside it was another rat, locked up, wriggling in distress. Not only did the free rat learn how to open a little door to liberate the other, but she was remarkably eager to do so. Never trained on it, she did so spontaneously. Then Bartal challenged her motivation by giving her a choice between two containers, one with chocolate chips—a favorite food that they could easily smell—and another with a trapped companion. The free rat often rescued her companion first, suggesting that reducing her distress counted more than delicious food.47 The empathy of laboratory rats has been tested by presenting them with a companion trapped in a glass container. Responding to the distress of the trapped rat, the free rat makes a purposeful effort to liberate her. This behavior disappears if the free rat is put on a relaxing drug, which dulls her sensitivity to the other’s emotional state.

Conversely, when Bartal gave her rats an anxiety-reducing drug, turning them into happy hippies, they still knew how to open the little door to reach the chocolate chips, but in their tranquil state, they had no interest in the trapped rat. They couldn’t care less, showing the sort of emotional blunting of people on Prozac or pain-killers. The rats became insensitive to the other’s agony and ceased helping. This outcome fits far better with the idea of empathy-based helping, or sympathy, than with explanations based on immediate self-interest.

And she had a mind like a rat trap and a razor-edged tongue, and she turned everything into a weapon, and he’d never been so happy in his life as when they’d clambered onto the roof of Aunt Harriet’s house, smoking illicit cheroots, watching the clouds or the stars, talking for hours on end.

Unsurprisingly, a retired dentist who starts a restaurant for the sex, or to be told he's marvelous, is totally unprepared for the realities of the business. He's completely blindsided when the place doesn't start making money immediately. Under-capitalized, uneducated about the arcane requirements of new grease traps, frequent refrigeration repairs, unforeseen equipment replacement, when business drops, or fails to improve, he panics, starts looking for the quick fix. He thrashes around in an escalating state of agitation, tinkering with concept, menu, various marketing schemes. As the end draws near, these ideas are replaced by more immediately practical ones: closed on Sundays. . . cut back staff . . . shut down lunch. Naturally, as the operation becomes more schizophrenic — one week French, one week Italian — as the poor schmuck tries one thing after another like a rat trying to escape a burning building, the already elusive dining public begins to detect the unmistakable odor of uncertainty, fear and approaching death. And once that distinctive reek begins to waft into the dining room, he may as well lay out petri-dishes of anthrax spores as bar snacks, because there is no way the joint is gonna bounce back. It's remarkable how long some of these neophytes hang on after the clouds of doom gather around the place, paying for deliveries COD as if magic will happen — one good weekend, a good review, something will somehow save them. Like some unseen incubus, this evil cloud of failure can hang over a restaurant long after the operation has gone under, killing any who follow. The cumulative vibe of a history of failed restaurants can infect an address year after year, even in an otherwise bustling neighborhood. You can see it when passersby peer into the front window of the next operator; there's a scowl, a look of suspicion, as if they are afraid of contamination.

The Ballad of Harry Lime by Stewart Stafford Harry found existence overrated, And its shadow, morality, so outdated, Scurrying rats down here in the sewer, Porcine gluttons in punished manure. Grand aspirations from primordial slime, Lifting up the rock from time to time, Samson, destroying a temple of hypocrisy, And every pillar - hope, faith and charity, They'd had him from baptism's font, Trapped before wording his wants, A heel dipped in brackish liturgy, Silent collusion in mass duplicity. For those who remained in smoky rubble? Rudely awakened from a cocoon bubble: An obelisk erected to grotesque finance, Charon’s fee for a Stygian dance. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.

Here eyes bulged and terror flexed her jaw down and thrust it out, pulling her skin taut and turning her cheekbones into sharp points. There was an almost impossible inch of pink gums exposed above her white teeth as her lips drew back. Somewhere during that interminable period Hoodoo Girl had transcended her emotional range. There comes a point where the brain can no longer process the excretions of the adrenal glands and the mind becomes so numbed to terror that it becomes fey. What she felt wasn’t courage, nor was it a lack of fear. She had descended to the sublime state of a rat trapped by much larger animals.

Even wise rats know the meaning of unexpected kindness

Soft washed river sand is still the best toy ever invented for children. It serves countless other purposes too. It cannot be beat for scouring dirty pots and pans and for cleaning wooden floors. Mixed with burnt powdered clam shells, you have the finest cement. Take a smooth slab of wood and cover it with tree or bush resin, sprinkle different colored river sand on the sticky resin to form colored pictures. River sand laid under animal traps prevent them from freezing down even in the coldest weather. River sand makes fine sidewalks and good insulation under buildings.

Fredi had always focused on getting kids excited to learn. He cared less about covering the required curriculum and more about finding hands-on projects. To many students, school felt sterile and bureaucratic. Fredi’s music was just one way he tried to change the ambience. It didn’t necessarily matter if they liked it. It was enough to be different. He also fought for unstructured time in the school day. When he arrived at Carl Hayden in 1987, he started a class called Science Seminar. There was no curriculum. Fredi just told students to find something fun to build or an idea to test. Over the years, students had embarked on a variety of unusual projects. One student tried to teach color-blind rats the differences among colors. Another student constructed a 1:60 clay model of downtown Phoenix, placed it in a wind tunnel, and blew carbon dioxide across it. The goal: determine how architecture could be used to increase air circulation and help dissipate trapped air pollution. Fredi’s room became the refuge of tinkerers, inventors, and frustrated dreamers.

ladders, grindstones, pitch forks, monkey wrenches, scythes, lawn mowers, snow shovels, ax handles, milk pails, water buckets, empty grain sacks, and rusty rat traps.

It might as well have TRAP written all over it in a font named Trap. Made of little traps. Bear traps for the curvy parts of the letters, and rat traps for… anyway,” he finished, “definitely a trap.

Around the turn of the century, I was happy to see a stream of fresh data bury these ideas. Anthropologists demonstrated a sense of fairness in people across the globe. Behavioral economists found humans to be naturally inclined to trust each other. Children and primates exhibited spontaneous altruism without enticements. And neuroscientists found that our brain is wired to feel the pain of others. My early work on empathy in primates was followed by research on dogs, elephants, birds, and even rodents, such as experiments in which one rat could free a trapped companion.10 We now realize that the preponderance of open competition in the natural world—the so-called struggle for life—had been grossly overstated.

I can’t judge. We all have emotional connections to certain branches of the tree of life, and for some that branch is trees. We are irrational in our species-specific devotions. I know a man who won’t eat octopus because of its intelligence. Yet he eats pork and buys glue traps for rats, though rats and pigs are highly intelligent, likely more intelligent—I’m guessing, for I have not seen the SAT scores—than octopuses. Why, for that matter, is intelligence the scale by which we decide whom to spare? Or size? Have the simple and the small less right to live?

They died honorably rather than like rats in a trap.

The little boy who never grew up, He trapped the frog and kills the rat, He flew a kite, the little boy who never grew up, He found a dream and took it home The little boy who never grew up, He planted his dream deep in his heart, The little boy who never grew up, He watered his dream, wishing his dream to bloom, The little boy who never grew up, The dream died, the dream drowned, The little boy who never grew up, Watered his dream too much, His dream died, the little boy cried, The little boy who never grew up His dream was dead; he wanted the same, The little boy who never grew up, He wishes his dream could take him away.

For there is a growing apprehension that existence is a rat-race in a trap: living organisms, including people, are merely tubes which put things in at one end and let them out at the other, which both keeps them doing it and in the long run wears them out. So to keep the farce going, the tubes find ways of making new tubes, which also put things in at one end and let them out at the other. At the input end they even develop ganglia of nerves called brains, with eyes and ears, so that they can more easily scrounge around for things to swallow. As and when they get enough to eat, they use up their surplus energy by wiggling in complicated patterns, making all sorts of noises by blowing air in and out of the input hole, and gathering together in groups to fight with other groups. In time, the tubes grow such an abundance of attached appliances that they are hardly recognizable as mere tubes, and they manage to do this in a staggering variety of forms.

Laura had taken a few steps into the room but now moved back towards the exit, like she’d had second thoughts. Maybe it was the smell that did it: the room had a musty, damp odour, the cloying reek of mildew and rot. But there was another smell, a top note, that was worse. Years ago I had lived in a bedsit that had a vile stink. Eventually I found the source: the previous tenant had left glue traps beneath the cooker and the fridge, and dead rats had been left rotting for weeks. That’s what this place smelled like. Rotting flesh. Death.

India, Nicholson would say, was ‘like a rat-trap, easier to get into than out of

I recently visited New Zealand and learned that it has a very diverse ecosystem. Until the arrival of humans, it was populated almost entirely by birds. They occupied every niche in the food chain, from tiny ɻightless things to predators so enormous they could snatch a hundred-pound prey for dinner. For millions of years, birds dominated their man-less, mammal-less world, a universe of feathers, beaks, and talons, knowing of no other form of higher life. The birds acquired a host of abilities and natural defenses optimal for their environment. But then in the thirteenth century, while the Europeans were still busy with their crusades, Polynesian explorers came, and with them came rats—with fur instead of feathers, teeth instead of beaks, and tiny paws instead of fearsome talons. The defense mechanisms that worked well against other birds failed against the rats. Small ɻightless birds who, when sensing danger, would remain perfectly still to avoid being spotted by predators ɻying overhead, would do the same when encountering a rat. Fighting for its life, in its passive way, the little bird focused its every eʃort on not moving a single muscle—only to be gobbled up where it stood. The scientific term for animals like the little bird who had not encountered rats or humans is naïve. I find this charming, as if the little bird existed in a moral universe of which his New Zealand was a kind of Eden, its inhabitants living a peaceful existence disrupted only by the victimization of a cunning intruder, preying on their relative innocence. I often think the people I encounter are naïve, but only because they may never have encountered someone quite like me. Sociopaths see things that no one else does because they have diʃerent expectations about the world and the people in it. While you and observer from certain harsh truths, the sociopath remains undistracted. We are like rats on an island of birds. I have never identified with the little bird, trapped by fear and an instinct for passivity, the wide-eyed victim of circumstance. I have never pined for an Eden of peace on earth and goodwill toward men. I am the rat, and I will take every advantage I can without apology or excuse. And there are others like me.

They won’t, your kind of intellectuals are the first to scream when it’s safe—and the first to shut their traps at the first sign of danger. They spend years spitting at the man who feeds them—and they lick the hand of the man who slaps their drooling faces. Didn’t they deliver every country of Europe, one after another, to committees of goons, just like this one here? Didn’t they scream their heads off to shut out every burglar alarm and to break every padlock open for the goons? Have you heard a peep out of them since? Didn’t they scream that they were the friends of labor? Do you hear them raising their voices about the chain gangs, the slave camps, the fourteen-hour workday and the mortality from scurvy in the People’s States of Europe? No, but you do hear them telling the whip-beaten wretches that starvation is prosperity, that slavery is freedom, that torture chambers are brother-love and that if the wretches don’t understand it, then it’s their own fault that they suffer, and it’s the mangled corpses in the jail cellars who’re to blame for all their troubles, not the benevolent leaders! Intellectuals? You might have to worry about any other breed of men, but not about the modern intellectuals: they’ll swallow anything. I don’t feel so safe about the lousiest wharf rat in the longshoremen’s union: he’s liable to remember suddenly that he is a man—and then I won’t be able to keep him in line. But the intellectuals? That’s the one thing they’ve forgotten long ago. I guess it’s the one thing that all their education was aimed to make them forget. Do anything you please to the intellectuals. They’ll take it.

Thunderbolts," Beatrix exclaimed, entering the library where Leo had been waiting, "I can't go with you to the ruins after all. I've just checked on Lucky, and she's about to have her babies. I can't leave her at such a time." Leo smiled quizzically, replacing a book on a shelf. "Who's Lucky?" "Oh, I forgot you hadn't met her. She's a three-legged cat who used to belong to the cheesemaker in the village. The poor thing got her paw caught in a rat trap, and it had to be amputated. And now that she's no longer a good mouser, the cheesemaker gave her to me. He never even named her, can you imagine?" "Given what happened to her, the name 'Lucky' is something of a misnomer, isn't it?" "I thought it might improve her fortunes." "I'm sure it will," Leo said, amused. Beatrix's passion for helping vulnerable creatures had always worried and touched the Hathaways in equal measure. They all recognized that Beatrix was the most unconventional person in the family. Beatrix was always sought after at London social events. She was a pretty girl, if not classically beautiful, with her blue eyes, dark hair, and tall, slender figure. Gentlemen were attracted by her freshness and charm, unaware that she showed the same patient interest to hedgehogs, field mice, and misbehaving spaniels. And when it came time for active courtship, men reluctantly left Beatrix's engaging company and turned to more conventional misses. With each successive season, her chances at marriage diminished. Beatrix didn't seem to care. At the age of nineteen- nearly twenty- she had yet to fall in love. It was universally agreed among the Hathaways that few men would be able to understand or handle her. She was a force of nature, unhampered by conventional rules.

Bad Trash ( I Don't Like the Sound of That) Runs in the family R u n s in the f a m i l y- No, that's an atrocity you won't hear from me I don't like the sound of that Not lyin' in a mouse trap- I'm a mofo' sassy cat I don't clean no d i r t y rat No, not my reality Said not M Y reality- Don't shine shit in front of me and call it my reality! I don't like the sound of that Cruel intentions get tires flat I say what will shine for me I say what will bleed for me I call out the trash to me Bad trash always dies for me Clawed out my own reality The top from the back alley I don't run in the family I run far from the alley Calling all my sour soulmates- Recovering a l l e y c a ts You all clean up so good now No bad, bad trash, just LoVe pats! No bad trash, just LoVe pats