Fat Albert Rat Game

Today, with a wind advisory in effect, we played doubles tennis: Papa Leopard and the three little Leopards--Stearns, Ilana, and me. It wasn't exactly tennis--"Play for wind," Papa Leopard said, meaning, "Just adjust your game for 30 mph gusts and you'll be fine." Oh, the competitive side of my family...

In the evening, Gypsy came over. Gypsy is pregnant with a little girl we will ironically call, Uriah. We first went to the carnival down the road. We have many delightful memories of the carnival when we were little. Stearns maintained that the paratroopers wouldn't be nearly as scary as they were when we were little, and then left Ilana and me to ride them. Boy, they were scary!

But the real highlight of the carnival was not the paratroopers, nor the game where you shoot solo cups with corks, nor the game where you throw little hoops over the handles of knives, but the Fat Albert Rat Game.














As I had never seen a game with a rat at a carnival, I knew immediately that we would have to play it. What happens is, you buy a token and bet it on a color or pattern. The color or pattern corresponds to a wedge on a rotating wheel. On the end of the colorful wedges on the rotating wheel are holes. The man in charge of the game takes an albino rat in a small jar and sits it in the middle of the rotating wheel. Then, he starts ringing a bell right beside the rat in a jar. (Now, I'm not sure what the bell has to do with anything. Perhaps it makes the rat want to climb out of the jar because he can't stand the sound of it. Perhaps the bell has no role at all, except to heighten the drama.) Then, the rat climbs out of the jar and runs into one of the holes. If he runs into the hole that you betted on, you win a stuffed animal.

So, the man put the rat on the wheel. The rat climbs out. At this point, Stearns starts shouting, "Camo, camo," for Camo is the pattern that she bet on and she's rooting for it. The rat, consequently, runs straight for the camo hole. Stearns, consequently, starts screaming and waiving her hands in the air, so that the man in charge can tell who won (only five people played the game; four of them were Gypsy and the three Leopards). Stearns later did not remember screaming or waving her hands, as she was so caught up in the moment.

She picked out a teddy bear with an ice cream cone (as the next stop on our trip was Eder's Ice Cream) and will give it to Uriah one day.

Eder's Ice Cream is delicious and gigantic (you have no idea how big these cones are, and if you come with us to Williamsport, we will take you there), plus, they help send their workers to college (as Stearns reminds us, and is verified by the existence of a tip jar that says "College Fund"). The smallest Eder's Ice Cream cone is called a "baby" and holds one scoop. The next biggest size is a "small," which holds two scoops. I've never met anyone who's eaten any ice cream cone size bigger than a small at Eder's.

Gypsy ordered a small, which they made even bigger than usual. As she walked away, she muttered, "I should've gotten a baby." Of course, Stearns, Ilana and I could not resist: we called after her in unison, "You've already got one!"