Elegy for a Blue Rat

The color of your fur is so brilliant,
So chemical,
So...very...blue,
Where you lie like a strange, furry Krishna
(Although that is perhaps a wildly innapropriate analogy)
Sprawled atop your den,
That messy pile of plant debris
That you worked so hard to build
In the middle of a prickly pear
Pehaps killing the plant through your labors
Or perhaps having chosen a dying plant to begin with -
We are not sure.

This shade of blue seems most likely unnatural,
Though perhaps you boast a gene
Or two
That have run amuck?
I fear not.

For your blue, gentle rat, is not the soothing shade of gentle skies
Or that of waters upon which people like to paddleboat
In tiny boats shaped like swans or exotic fish,
Nor is it the blue of wildflowers or even of monkeys
With weird stripes on their faces.
Your blue, Blue Rat, is that of
Frost Glacier Freeze Gatorade,
Which was introduced in 1997,
Or perhaps Fierce Wild Berry which came
Later.
It is the blue of those freezer pops we ate as kids
That stained our lips and tongues
The same blue as your fur
And probably did not contain actual
Blueberries
Although to be fair,
I'm not sure they ever claimed to do so on the labels.

Blue Rat, you appear to have been liberally doused
With Original Scent Liquid Tide.

Blue Rat, I do not know
How you came to meet your fate
In the more-or-less sealed (or so we thought) confines of the
Porta-John
While we were away from the excavation site
We were working on
(We were having fun - perhaps you were too,
Up to a certain point).
Perhaps more vexing,
I do not pretend to understand
How you climbed out.
But the nature of your chemically induced death
I grasp.

Blue Rat, with your fur so very...very blue,
like an unnatural star winking in the depths
Of an open Porta-John,
It is true,
I am making fun,
But really I do not feel that anyone,
Including rats and extremely dangerous gangsters,
Deserves to die
In a Porta-John,
And I hope you are in a better place.

I think you'd have to be.