I like to feed the garden birds. It’s a 4^th house thing – and a Cancer thing – as is any nurturing we feel we want to do. I like birds, perhaps because they symbolise freedom. I would like to fly away. Once I had an out of body experience – one of the best experiences of my life – I was free of my body to float invisibly and observe this and that. The feeding of the birds I have been doing for about 20 years. Recently, because of some personal loss I expect, they have been receiving larger portions than usual so there have been left-overs. The leftovers have been attracting Mr or Mrs Rattus Rattus. I have been ignoring this intrusion into my world of bird feeding for about a year (I do not identify with Rat particularly), but sensed that lately Rat was becoming more confident, more at home. Maybe it would invite its friends and relations. So I devised a humane rat-trap: a large, deep transparent plastic container which had once been used to store bird seed. One time a mouse or two had eaten their way into it through the plastic lid, consumed the seed then found they could not escape. They looked very crestfallen when I discovered them in the morning. So this bin was just sitting around waiting for a purpose. (I know how that feels.)

My humane rat-trap was therefore this bin. I was hoping the rat would be as dim-witted as the mice and also small enough not to be able to leap out. I situated it on the ground near the bird feeders with a little seed in the bottom and from time to time would sit in the shed nearby and observe. What evolved was not the trapping of Rattus Rattus, but a very enthusiastic blackbird community who, it turned out, found it to be an excellent private restaurant. Blackbirds like a little privacy – especially from those annoying young starlings. So the bin sat there as another feeder and I took to idly lobbing chunks of wood in the general area of Mrs Rat when I happened to see her hoping that eventually she would take the hint.

Then, yesterday this rodent story came to a fatal and final conclusion. Mars was opposite natal Chiron in my birth chart: there would be a little bit of wounding and a little bit of healing today.

The day was hot in the blazing June tradition, so while the rest of the world was trooping down to the beach I went in the opposite direction to the woods. It was too hot to walk far so I found a shady spot which was good (healing) but it turned out to be in the area of a rotting animal and a deer defecation area – very smelly (wounding). So I left and began the half hour drive home remembering the road was gridlocked and I would have to go the back way. But the back way was grid locked as well. Spending time in traffic in several gridlocked situations on the several back ways I eventually gave up and left the area. So this was a wounding thing, but the car had air/con and I was listening to A-H so it could have been worse – this was the healing part. By the time I tried to head home again I found the best way onto the alternative way and arrived back with relative ease and no road-rage.

The birds needed more water in these conditions. After tending to them I sat down with a snack in the shed and zoned out till out of the corner of my eye I noticed Mrs Rat run up the fence into my line of vision. Without thinking too much about it as it was too hot to think I reached into the wood kindling box to my right, fetched out a hand-sized cube and lobbed it in her general direction. Now, I am not a good sniper at the best of times. Jean and I would sometimes sit on the beach and play the game where you throw pebbles at a can to see who can win the most hits – she always won. And a cube shaped piece of wood is not aerodynamic. So imagine my surprise when I hit poor Mrs Rat on the head and she twitched and died stone dead right there and then in front of me. I could not quite believe it. Maybe she was faking it – rats are clever little things – so I threw another missile to the area but she remained motionless.

This morning I checked, hoping she had recovered in the night, but no, my shot had been a killer. I had performed my Mars opposite Chiron energy to an unusual extreme. Mars is assertive and in Cancer, as it is now, wants security. Chiron in Capricorn wants to maintain the general order of the world which does not include an invasion of rats. The wounding and the healing, which, with Chiron as the archetype are usually simultaneous, was complete in the rat department.

I feel devastated, way more than the event deserves by usual standards. My rat trap bin plan had been to take the captured rat in the car to some other area. I am not a murderer of anything. And I think she was a dam (that’s the name for a female rat with young) as I spotted a small thing in the ground-ivy close-by.

So okay, pulling myself together, I must find a wider meaning. What does this show me? That I must be more careful when throwing things in the direction of living things? Like words for example? It also highlights the unending pressure I have been receiving in the 4^th house – Cancer again, this time from Mars.

As per a previous post there is a hierarchy of importance, of dynamics at work in the astro-map to reveal how it all links back from the outcome to the source, so it is my work to find out what the message is. A little at a time, what thought or action feels better enough to take me in a more positive direction.

If at one end of the stick there is the psychopath who is unable to feel empathy, at the other end of the stick there is the person who can do nothing else but feel empathy. I think I am that person. I think that is why I keep others away, preferring isolation to involvement. As a progressed new moon moves in to become exact next month in Capricorn, it might be time for me to consider some advantages of this sign. I have not yet felt the benefit rat-wise.

Epilogue

Another hot day developed so I was limp outside within view of the bird feeders. The birds were relatively limp also. Perhaps we were all feeling a little sad for the passing of our uninvited guest who somehow flew over the garden fence and landed in the dry brook after I found the rake. I listened to Women’s Hour on the radio in an effort to bond with Capricorn. (I also invested time in finding the font that did the special astro-characters which do not translate into WordPress apparently.) Then suddenly, surprisingly, out of the ivy on the big stones by the fence came Mrs Rat like Lazarus raised from the dead. Naturally my first thought was that she, Rattus Rattus must have a double, but I decided the similarity was just too striking. So there it is, Chiron in my birth chart must mean resurrection. Or maybe I have evolved into a Super-Scorpio.

Next, she jumped into the feeder bin – so I waited and waited to see if she would get out again. She did. With ease. So I tidied the thing away, sat back down and waited for more activity, wondering if rats were now to be allowed to the feast every day and to what extent. I was feeling pleased that in some way I had uncommitted murder. It was a very hot day….

More time and more Women’s Hour segments went by and after the rat activity increased to almost the level of the bird activity, I confess I threw one small log-ette – aiming definitely not at the target.

So that’s how it turned out, transiting Mars opposite natal Chiron, that is. It is, as I write,  about 30 minutes of arc past exact.

This has been a cautionary tale for all readers about how knowing the way life events match current astrological transits can help you make useful decisions and judgements in life every day. And possibly save lives.

Thank you very much.