"In the tunnel recess, Mac does not need a trap with stale food or a feces-soaked rag to catch “track rabbits,” as rats are known to the underground homeless. They come because the garbage is as dense as its stench. The light is very dim, but Mac is well accustomed to it all. Many newcomers vomit here, he warns. No use wondering what the smell is, he says. It’ll just make you sick thinking of the possibilities. Ignore it, he advises. I bury my nose and mouth deeper into the collar of my turtleneck. The cloth seems to filter the stench a bit. At least my eyes stop watering and my senses recover slowly from the shock. A shuffling sound penetrates the

quiet darkness, and Mac crouches low to the ground, like a wrestler preparing for a new round. This, he says, is how you hunt track rabbits. A brown rat the size of a small adult raccoon sniffs its way out of the refuse and lumbers past Mac, undeterred by the stark beam of my flashlight pointed aimlessly at my feet. He is in no way frightened by human sand is prepared to ignore us. “See,” Mac says proudly, “the biggest, healthiest, and boldest sons of bitches you’ve ever seen live down here.” The rat turns at the sound of his voice and, teeth bared, darts toward Mac. In a sudden, graceful movement, Mac’s hand sweeps down as if throwing dice and seizes the base of the animal’s tail. The rat shrieks and claws the air a she lifts it high above the ground. Mac lets out a short, powerful laugh. “He doesn’t look so almighty up there, does he?” he asks triumphantly. He flips his wrist with a snap and the rat’s body flies off into the dark and makes a dull thud as it strikes the wall." – Margaret Morton, The Mole People

“I took his head off for you,” he smiles. “You probably wouldn’t want to see it, but when you’re hungry, it’s very good. Juicy. Reminds me of pig’s feet. Tasty. But the fun is sucking out the gook. You can even eat some of the finer bones.” As the rat cooks, he tells me about his favorite book, Thoreau’s On Waiden Pond.” He carries a worn, paperback copy of it in the back pocket of his jeans and is able to quote long passages from it. I ask, dizzy from the scent of burning flesh and cracking hair that haunts the campsite, if he is a Transcendentalist. “I am, myself,” he says, then pauses to look from the rat to me. “But that’s a surprisingly dumb question from you,” he says aggressively. “I am simply being myself, living for myself, so I can have things down here established when others come down and need me. It’s my calling, you might say." – Margaret Morton, The Mole People