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| Age 10 |
(NOTE from cpps90: Tim was 10 years old when this happened)
Tim's brother had a pet rat which he kept in a metal cage with an exercise wheel in it. The cage was on their desk. He and Tim share a bedroom and the rat was in their bedroom. It smelled pretty bad when his brother didn't clean out the cage.
One day Tim came home from soccer practice. He had taken his shin guards off and rolled his socks down to his ankles. He was just a little sweaty and a bit pumped from his workout. His team had been doing sprints.
Tim went in the bedroom and the smell was more than he could stand. His brother had not cleaned out the cage again.
Tim wears 6-stud soccer cleats that have four metal studs in the front and two in the back.
Tim grabbed the cage and set it on the floor next to the desk. He put his cleats on top of it and took hold of the big, heavy desk with his hands. He began to flex his soccer-trained leg muscles. He pulled up on the desk and crushed down on the cage.
The cage began to bend and collapse as Tim pressed down on it. It was slowly being crushed. The little metal door popped off its tracks and went flying across the room. The top of the cage pressed down against the exercise wheel. The extra resistance caused the ridges in Tim's upper quads to appear. As his legs got straighter he was able to increase the pressure on the cage. The feeder trays cracked and popped out of the sides of the cage. It collapsed until it was less than two inches high. The exercise wheel was slowly flattened along with the cage. I could see Tim's quads just above his knees start to bulge out and veins begin to appear on them. As his knees locked Tim flexed his calves and raised himself on his toes. The large veins running down the insides of his lower legs popped out in sharp relief. The edge of the desk was lifted up off the floor. As Tim's calves reached maximum contraction the cage was crushed completely flat. Several of the bars on the sides popped loose and stuck out at odd angles. Little ridges of muscle defined the edges of his calves and blue veins popped out of them as he held the desk up.
His metal cleats had made 8 deep dents in the bottom of the cage.
After letting the desk back down and stepping off the cage, Tim put the crushed ruin that had been the cage back on top of the desk and left it for his brother to find. It clearly had the imprints of Tim's soccer cleats in it.
Tim told me that flattening the cage was pretty hard. He said he could feel the cage being crushed under his cleats and the strain on his muscles and that it was kind of cool. Tim is a kid who really enjoys his strength.
The rat was very lucky. It survived by running to the edge of the cage and hiding in a small crease where the side was bent outwards. It had to be cut loose with a wire cutter to free it. Tim was just as glad he didn't hurt his brother's pet. He just got too mad at the smell.
Tim's dad did not say anything to Tim about the incident because he knew the cage smell was really bad and that Tim hated having it around.
Tim's brother got a new cage and always kept it clean after that. The next time the rat might not escape Tim's cleats!
