Previously, I joked about APOPO, an organization which uses trained rats to remove landmines and detect tuberculosis1. As penance for my joke, I made a donation to this fine organization and I now receive occasional updates from them.
In honor of April 4th’s International Day for Mine Awareness, and because I’m incredibly romantical, I adopted a HeroRAT in the name of my special lady. When I told her “I got you a rat”, let me tell you, she. was. grateful. Her rat’s name is Mojo, and he’s shockingly intelligent. Witness this letter he wrote:
Dictated, but not read?
That rat’s got quite the vocabulary, and in time, he’ll also have quite the skill set. Hey, how many land mines do you think you could clear? The answer is almost certainly one, at which point your career would be over with a very literal bang. Unlike your clumsy ass, however, the rats are small enough to avoid setting off the land mines. Indeed, I’d always envisioned the HeroRATs as being very mouse-like. The picture of Mojo seen above makes him seem quite tiny.
Zounds!
OK, nevermind. That is a huge rat.
Anyhow, if you want to get some of your own sweet, sweet just-had-a-rodent-adopted-in-my-name action from your special someone, donate to APOPO2. For just a few dollars, you too could be the proud sponsor of a giant-ass life-saving rat.
Love & whiskers,
Paul
Footnotes:
Not at the same time. ↩︎
As they’re an out-of-country, however, APOPO doesn’t have 501(c)(3) status. To make a tax-deductible donation, you can use the “Friends of” area of the King Baudoin Fondation’s donation page. ↩︎
