This Thing used to be a halloween rat that screamed "Wild Thing" and wobbled its head.
Oooh. Scary. I bet The Troggs are weeping in their graves. Wait. Are they dead? If not, they'll certainly appreciate this version.

Once I stripped off the offensive thin rubbery skin (it was peeling and decaying from being in the Orange County October sun two weeks out of the year so my neighbor gave it to my kids to play with. Yep. The kids sure play with it now...) the body below pretty much built itself. I didn't need to paint it—it was already a perfect oily black.

The case it travels in was an old slide carrier. It had space for 3 drawers that could be filled with 35mm slides. After I pulled the drawers it became the perfect carrier cave for the RatThing (and a few blinkyblinkys so that I always have some with it).

The range of sound that now comes out of this Thing is amazing. Subtle tones, beautiful optically sequenceable techno, grunchy lo-bit.

Hear the awfulness below!

The controls (head):
•Human Contact Resistance nubs
•Optical resistors under clear glass marble eyeballs
•Toggle switch whiskers activate optical resistors

(body)
•Power on/off toggle
•UV LED to indicate power on
•Tone button: high tone when pushed.
•Tonal crash toggle: used with tone button, it will get into optically controlled crash mode
•Toggle to turn on pitch pot below
•Pot pitch control (unknown value) with a very long shaft (a nice tail)

Audio out via 1/8" belly button.

Detail of Head and more shots below.

Its sooooooo cute (and EVIL).

Stay tuned for construction shots (featuring the old, pustulated, rubber rat skin lovingly photographed to your eyballs' horror).

Crouching in its cave waiting.

Audio Bits:

RT_NormalToSlow.mp3 Just as it says: Normal to slow. You wild thing.
RT_OptStaticClick.mp3 Like satellites chittering in the dark with optical resistors and blinkyblinkys.
RT_OptSynth.mp3 Those same satellites discovering disco.
RT_TonalOpticalSynth.mp3 And finally inventing Burt Bacharach.