Swimming with Sooloo!
February 19th, 2025 by The Rat
Hi again, everybody! Thanks for all the good suggestions about new sports to try. Today I went to the aquarium with Emmy and all of a sudden I had a rat-brilliant idea. How about swimming? Luckily I had my swim trunks and goggles along (I never go to the aquarium without them), and I hopped right in. And guess who I met there? A new friend!
The only thing is, I don’t speak Sea Turtle. And she didn’t speak Rodent. (Or English, which is my second language.) She was very friendly, though, and kept trying to talk to me. Her words sounded like this: “Bubble bub blub bubbly blubbly blub.” I was almost going to give up and swim away, but then she said “Sooloo”, and pointed with her flipper at herself, and so I said “Ratty”, and pointed with my paw at myself, and all of a sudden we were making up our own sign language! And most of the time, we managed to understand each other just fine. So I hung out with Sooloo and she gave me rides on her back, and everything.
It was lots of fun! Much better than sweating in an old bowling alley, for sure. At least, it was fun until somebody in a uniform came and scooped me out with a net. And they told Emmy to never let her rat swim in the exhibits again.
But it was still great to meet Sooloo. I’m glad we kept trying to talk to each other, even when it was hard at first. Have you ever met someone who was hard to understand? What did you do?
- 6 Comments »
- Posted in Raston's Blog
February 19th, 2025 at 9:59 am
Yes Ratty, we have both met people who we did not understand. Kayson did not know what language they spoke so he ran away from them. Ansel just hung out with them at recess but didn’t really talk to them. Sometimes he did understand me even though he speaks spanish and Ansel didn’t.
February 19th, 2025 at 10:00 am
Dear Ratty,
We would try and learn their language like you did. We would like to learn sign language…can you teach us sign language?
February 19th, 2025 at 10:02 am
Hi Ratty,
Nice to see you again! We had a friend (more like family thought) but we could not understand them. We went to one of our rooms and got a little translator. Then we could hear what they were saying in our language. Also one time we went to the mark and we wanted to be friends with someone, but we could not understand them so a parent helped us understand them.
February 19th, 2025 at 10:03 am
Dear Ratty,
Yes we have met somebody who was hard to understand. What we did was we tired to learn her language.
February 19th, 2025 at 10:05 am
Dear Ratty,
I couldn’t understand some of my family members because they spoke a different language. I told somebody else who spoke two languages and she told us what each person was saying. They wanted to play!
February 19th, 2025 at 11:44 pm
Hello, everybody! It was very interesting to read about all the things that you tried when you couldn’t understand someone!
I can understand running away, Kayson… that’s what I did at first with Sooloo (only I swam away!) Just hanging out with a person was a great thing to try, Ansel. Because the other person knew you were trying to be friendly, even if you couldn’t really talk together!
Dazelle, Aure, and Damien, the little translator you got that helped you understand someone’s language sounds just ratzactly like the Universal Rodent Translator that Professor Capybara used when I sang my song at the grown-up party at Emmy’s house! When you chose the little translator, did you happen to notice if one of them was for Rodentese? And it sounds like your parents were ratsuper helpful when you wanted to make friends with someone you couldn’t understand. Parents are… (sniffle!) very wonderful people… or sometimes rodents… (sob!) Oh, I miss my Ratmommy! (wipes ratty eyes with a trembling paw, clears throat)
All right, back to the business at hand!
Ember, Lorreign, Meera and Noah, that was a ratexcellent idea to try to learn the other person’s language. It does take a long time, though, and it’s a little hard to do, especially at first! I, myself, have tried to learn Aardvark, but I didn’t have much success. But I did pretty well at Sea Turtle.
And Meera and Noah, I would be happy to teach you Rodent sign language, but–well, you would have to have a tail. And whiskers. Because we rodents don’t just use our paws when we do sign language. We also curl up our tails and wiggle our whiskers. Would you, by any chance, consider growing tails and whiskers?