MORTEIN rat poison: A case report

It was a nice peaceful Saturday evening and we were just sitting down to watch some TV, when a giant monstrosity ran across the room. This was no ordinary rat. Ordinary rats look malnourished. Ordinary rats look like they eat cheese. This rat looked like it ate biryani. Mutton biryani.

It probably took me several hundred nanoseconds to jump up and clear the area. With ipod, laptop and cell phone in hand (and the ENT book on the floor, because really, who cares about that?) I promptly moved to the next room while my grandmother jumped into action, readying the mouse traps and poisons, among which was a cake of MORTEIN.

Requirements:

• One cake of MORTEIN
• One rat, preferably trapped inside a bathroom that is locked from the outside

Experimental procedure:

• Open door
• Blindly throw in the poison
• Close the door

To be noted:

Entire procedure must be completed within 3 seconds or before the rat comes out of the open door (rat-escape), whichever comes first. If the rat has emerged from its confinement, then you, my friend, are in deep trouble. Deep deep trouble.

Ensure that while blindly throwing in the poison, the same does not fall into an open toilet seat, as this will necessitate a repetition of the procedure, and this in turn is associated with a higher rate of rat-escape.

Review of literature:

Based on the information contained on a piece of paper that was packed with the rat poison, I was able to conclude that MORTEIN is meant to be an anti-coagulant which causes rodent death by internal bleeding.

Observation:

The rat was left inside the bathroom for half an hour, surrounded by rat traps and poison. One such rat trap was a kind of cage with a piece of cheese in it, and the cage was supposed to snap shut when the rat ate the cheese. When we looked, however, the rat was found to be very comfortably sitting inside the cage, eating the cheese, and then found to very comfortably exit the said cage, with a full stomach.

On to plan B. This was a rectangular plate with a piece of cheese in the centre, surrounded by a gum-like paste which was supposed to stick to the rat’s legs and not let it get away. The obvious design flaw with this one was that even if the rat did successfully get stuck, you’re still left with a struggling, angry, live, perfectly healthy rat, stuck to a plate of glue. This trap also failed (thankfully).

And now the rat finally decided to eat MORTEIN. The rat was found to be hiding under the washing machine, seemingly disoriented and delusional, and hopefully bleeding into its brain or something. It had been chewing on rusted metal on the stand-like thing that was holding up the washing machine and pooping. A LOT.

Inference:

Two important never-before-documented side effects of MORTEIN ingestion were noted. Diarrhoea and pica.

Possible clinical applications in humans:

• Constipation. However, the side effect of using this drug is internal bleeding and death, but on the plus side, you’ll die with an empty bowel
• Kids who refuse to eat anything. The induced pica will unfortunately also cause the child to eat plastic, mud, pencils, metal (experimentally proven) and dirt* but hey, at least the kid’s eating now

[* list not exhaustive]

Further research into this matter is required.

PS. For anyone wondering how our rat finally met it’s doom, Death came in the form of the next door watchman, whose bravery must be applauded. He gave us a smile and then went into the bathroom with a metal rod in his hand and no slippers on his feet and locked the door from the inside, in true Tom & Jerry style. Some noises and 30 seconds later, he came out holding that cage thing with the rat inside. Though we were curious about how he did it, we did not ask; for when a hero emerges victorious from an epic battle such as this, one does not ask questions, but merely stares in wondrous awe