Mr. Hankey, the Halloween Poo and the Rest of the Rat Pack

P'Ying and I started the experimental part of our theses today. Fifty male Wistar rats were involved as well as lots of squealing (more so from me and P'Ying rather than the rats). We're not scared of rats, heck no, but we're scared to death of hurting them. We had to grasp them behind their shoulders and force-feed them Arsenic with these long syringe-like metal tubes. Whaaah. God, I feel so sinful. As I was feeding rat number 2 Arsenic, I imagined him saying, "Just you wait till our next lives! I'll be the mad, evil scientist and you'll be the squealing rat, MWAHAHAHA!". There goes my plunging karma (not that I'm Buddhist, but still...). Still, I guess today wasn't that bad. Tomorrow's the big one; we're going to be gassing fifty rats with Ether before plucking out their spleens, livers, blood and testes. Thank God for P'Poh. Even though he'll probably never see this, kob khun mak mak mak ka. Without him, P'Ying and I would still be struggling with rat number 4 trying to get Arsenic down its throat.





P'Ying and I named a few of our furry friends. There was J. Lo, the biggest rat in the pack who had the biggest bad-@ss booty.

Bennifer getting cozy. Awww.

There was also Harry Houdini who performed a masterful escapist/disappearing act by squeezing his way out through the cage bars. How, I do not know, but maybe it was magic (ooooh...). Luckily, we caught him in time and so we didn't have to go scurrying around the lab on a mad goose hunt (or, in this case, mad rat hunt) trying to find him.


Harry Houdini, caught in the act.

There was also Tarzan, a rather brave little soul who liked to climb to high points and swing and perch. Last, but not least, my personal favorite, Mr. Hankey, the Halloween Poo. We named him, most affectionately, after Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo of South Park fame. Mr. Hankey (our Mr. Hankey, not South Park Mr. Hankey) had a tendency to defecate the most out of the whole rambunctious lot and was actually rather adept with poo-squirting. It was rather machine gun-like. Bang, bang, ka-bang. Needless to say, it was pretty gross. Can you picture flying poo? Oh, yuck.


"Howdy-Ho!"

P'Poh (bless his South Park-deprived soul) has never watched or even heard of South Park. We tried explaining what Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo was all about ("It's this hopping, talking piece of poo and he wears a cute little Santa hat. He sings funny Christmas carols and bugs Kyle during Christmas so that everyone in town thinks he's a fecal-philiac."), but all he did was give us this "you're-so-weird" look before saying, "Puak teu doo rai-karn arai wa nia?" (What the heck kind of TV do you guys watch?).

We should be done sometime next week. We have to go to Chulalongkorn University with P'James (this Ph.D grad who's helping Dr. Teerayut supervise us) to do some more tests. It's practically right next door to Siam Square, yah!

I still don't want to gas the rats tomorrow. God, I can still hear the rats crying out. Sob, sob, sob. Oh, the horror, I feel so effing horrible.

On another note, Happy Halloween everyone! I hope you all have fun tonight trick-or-treating and partying. Like Empty_Plate, I, too, am gonna be hitting the ceiling tonight once I get a hold of good-for-you Halloween sugasugasugasuga. Oh, and yes Dr. Brucey Chim-Chim Lee, 10/31 most certainly does equate to shameless hyperglycemia. Ms. Chocoholic is definitely in! Hoo yeah.



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