A Ghost Ship, Cannibal Rats, and the Graveyard Shift

In the news this week is a ghost ship headed for the UK and aboard are cannibal rats. Around 1976, the Yugoslavians built this luxury liner, the Lyubov Orlova, for the Russians to ferry their wealthy, although back then I think that was only Commies, to the cold regions of the world. Leave it to the Ruskies not do like everyone else and visit the Bahamas or the Riviera or the Mediterranean.  The venture didn’t work out well. Don’t know why.  Who wouldn’t want to shell out big bucks—or is that Rubles?—to see ice bergs and seal slaughters? After racking up big debt, the ship was seized by the Canadians for scrap and ferried to Dominican Republic. But somewhere along the way they lost it. The thing has been adrift since 2010 and is heading for the UK coast.

 

Ontop of this is the theory that the only living things aboard are rats.  Without much food, they would need to turn to each other, and become cannibals. Munch, munch, munch.  When the ship hits the land, the mutant rodents will disembark and gorge themselves on unsuspecting Europeans. (Perhaps we should warn them.)  Albeit, no one takes into account that the boat has been adrift for 4 years and maybe the hungry rodents have depleted their numbers by now. O, dear, what will they ever do?

 I just caught on Netflix the Stephen King movie, Graveyard Shift. Like most of King’s movies which are very, very good or very, very bad, this one was in the latter class of flicks.  **Spoiler alert** This one hinges on a big, like really big, rat that has developed wings and lives in the basement of a textile mill,.  We could call it a bat but then that wouldn’t fit in the movie’s plot of the regular size rats showing up just before big brother arrives. I envision on the Lyubov Orlova this big rat at the helm wearing a captain’s hat and carrying a fork and knife. He orders the crew: “Full steam ahead. I’m hungry.”