One ought not to be criticized for wondering just where distemperate individuals obtain their supply of “rats’ asses” from which they decline to be parted even over things for which they seem not to care.

Where are they kept?  Do they have any uses other than with respect to pejorative declamations?  If those who decline to dispose of them have none but still claim an unwillingness to surrender them, is that an example of actionable fraud or has it become acceptable deception, as in “selling stocks short”.

Are rats asses in short supply?  Given all the rats that populate most parts of the world, one would think not, but where can rats asses be obtained?  Are their specialized dispensaries?  Do they have uses other than in conjunction with morphological metaphors and similes?

Do rats’ asses have any intrinsic values to anyone or anything other than their original owners?  Given the frequency of allusions to them, might it be worthwhile to invest in rats’ asses, or perhaps, in rats’ asses’ futures?  Are they traded in any commodities exchange, perhaps in the Wuhan markets?

What might rats, were they given to pondering, think of all the attention given to that aspect of their physiogeny?  What does such interest say about those humans who seem so invested in them that they will not give them up?

Somewhat queer queries on a Sunday morning during an early spring, floating in the air at slightly more than seven thousand feet in the central range of the Colombian Andes.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2021; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently a strategic analyst employed by Qest Consulting Group, Inc.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at http://www.guillermocalvo.com.