Katie saw a ripple move under the skin as Ms. Darby shifted one of the bags. Chomping down, Katie tore a rat out of the plastic.
No one had protested, despite Ms. Darby’s reluctance to tamper with other people’s waste—”We were sort of vaguely trespassing,” she noted as she left one trash pile.
“The few occasions I saw a real resident, they were thrilled.” Sometimes, Ms. Darby feels sorry for the rats as well. She said, “But I love Katie more.”
“I know what it looks like when a dog is doing the job they were born to do — so alert and so alive in every molecule,” she said, adding that she grew up on a farm with a Border collie. And I knew that about Katie.
