I have two very unusual keepsakes on one of my many bookshelves.

One is an empty glass vile, the contents of which dried up long ago.

The other is an unusual metallic nugget.

When I have visitors and they inevitably begin to peruse my bookshelves, I am most often

asked about the piece of metal.

In answering, I start by telling about the glass vile.

I do this because they both came from the same experience, and I cannot tell of one without

telling of the other.

In my senior year of college, I had an encounter that I will never forget.

My college campus had a series of underground maintenance tunnels.

Once a year, it was my job to enter the tunnels and clean them.

In most places, they were little more than crawl spaces, save for a few more open areas.

Spending a few hours in claustrophobic darkness with only roaches, rats, and the abnormally

large toads for company was not ideal.

In hindsight, it wasn't so bad at all.

Rather, it wouldn't have been, if not for the circumstances.

I realized something was off when an hour passed and I hadn't spotted a single rat.

Normally, I would have spotted at least seven of them in the first half hour.

I counted my blessings and continued to scrub the floor, sending a small horde of roaches

scurrying up the walls.

There were still plenty of disgusting critters keeping me company down here, so I decided

not to let the absence of rodents concern me.

...