Officially the most traumatizing event of my life

[odetteodile72]

So I'm at the lab at the VA today doing motor behavior testing on a group of rats, like I do a lot of the days. We have them do 2 things: walk across a grid that looks like tiny monkey bars and have them walk across a balance beam. Well it was 4:30, and I'd been working on those since 11 or so, and just had to have 9 rats do the balance beam twice more. Great, I'll be totally finished and out of thereincluding cleaning within an hour. Right. So I put the rat (#10 if anyone's interested) on the balance beam. She's all scared, doesn't want to walk, just stands on it sideways. Okay, that's cool, she'll start walking it soon enough. Not so much. Little bitch-rat decides she wants to jump off the beam. Not only does she want to jump off the beam, she wants to jump off it ONTO MY FACE!! So yeah, I got a totally spread-eagle-leaping 8-inch-long rat on my FUCKING FACE! It bounced off, didn't scratch my face or anything thankfully, but then again it's hard to be thankful about such things when you just had a huge-ass rat on your face. Naturally I screamed, bot that there was anyone about to hear my screams, because only a couple people hadn't left yet and they were 2 floors below me. When I picked the little pisshead off the floor I managed (with difficulty) to resist the urge to throw it against a wall instead of putting it happily back in its cage. Needless to say, that was the end of the day for me. I was not about to continue at 4:30 after having a rat jump in my face. Lesson learned: don't go into research. Med school, here I come. Fewer rats there anyway. Little bastards.

Sympathy comments only please. This is not a funny story.

P.S. I think I got rat pee in my hair as well earlier in the day, but that pales in comparison, especially considering I'm not entirely sure I did at all.