Why we should learn to love rats
In a corner of Yorkshire, there's a plague of biblical proportions. Across the nation, there's an infestation. We may love to hate them, says Jonathan Brown – but have we got them all wrong?
Thursday, 26 March 2009 article in: The Independent Newspaper
Jonathan Brown: 'They are not stupid, and that's why they survive. When we are gone, there will be rats about'
My phobia dates back to my childhood, when I lived above my parents' greengrocer's. One summer's evening, as I sat blamelessly watching Blake's 7 on television, my father asked my brother and I to help with a small job in the shop. Armed with hammers and monkey wrenches, he dramatically rolled back the fake grass to reveal a seething mass of rodents, which he set about dispatching with brutal ferocity in a fury of squeaks and crunching sounds. It was an experience from which I have never really recovered, and I've spent much of my life ever since peering anxiously into darkened corners or starting at the slightest sound of rustling. These are deeply worrying times for people like me and others who suffer from musophobia – the name for fear of mice or rats.
The modern antipathy towards rats dates back to the plagues of the 14th century. The pandemic claimed the lives of up to 100 million people – it was the greatest catastrophe ever visited upon mankind and it was caused by the micro-organism Yersinia pestis, carried by the tropical rat flea Xenopsylla cheopis, which in turn lived on Rattus. Rattus was the forerunner of the modern brown rat. Better known as the black rat, Rattus was at that time the dominant rodent in Europe, having arrived from Asia shortly before the turn of the first millennium but which, like man, fell in vast numbers to the plague.
The black rat's larger and water-loving rival, the brown rat, was misnamed Rattus norvegicus by English naturalist John Berkenhout, who mistakenly believed it had arrived in this country on board Norwegian trading ships. Originally from Asia, it arrived during the industrial revolution and drove out its darker-furred cousin. Unfortunately for rat-haters, this history puts the brown rat and its present-day descendants in the clear as far as plague is concerned.
Many civilisations rather like rats. In India, the rat is the vehicle of Lord Ganesh, while at Rajastan's famous Karni Mata Temple, some 20,000 rats can be found. Many Hindus travel great distances to pay their respects to the kabbas, or holy animals, that guard the shrine, believing them to be reincarnations of the deity's tribespeople. In China, the rat is one of the 12 members of the animal zodiac. People lucky enough to be born in the year of the rat are said to qualities of creativity, honesty, generosity and ambition.
So is it really possible to learn to love rats? Colin Arundel, president of the Yorkshire Rat Club, invited me to his farm cottage in Pontefract, to try to convince me. Rats, he explains, have been kept as pets in Britain ever since Queen Victoria's ratcatcher, Jack Black, first domesticated one. They were particularly popular with upper-class women, he explains, forbidden by their families from indulging in most other hobbies and activities on grounds of decorum. Rats became much loved companions.
"Mankind is illogical," explains Arundel, a 74-year-old retired market gardener and grandfather, as he piles a necklace of three huge Rex "fancy" rats on to my taut shoulders. "They are extremely curious, but man can't abide an animal that is as intelligent and curious as he is. They will quickly adapt to different changes in their situation and they learn very quickly," he says.
It is of great irony to him that, following a serious blood clot last year, he is being kept alive thanks to the anti-coagulant drug warfarin, a traditional rat poison. "You really can't feel the tensions of life when you have got rats. Everything slows to their pace. You won't find them scratching at the door or howling on the roof like a cat – and you never have to take them for a walk. Compared with ferrets, they are very family-friendly and not sexist, like parrots, either," he says.
There are many amazing things about rats, it seems. They can smell stereoscopically, for example. This means that in a darkened room they can tell whether food is on the left or right of their nose within 50 thousandths of a second. A rat's tail – not at all cold and clammy but really rather beautiful – is a versatile prehensile tool that also acts as a cooling mechanism to make up for the fact that they don't sweat. For that matter, rats are never sick – like frogs, they are incapable of vomiting.
One neuroscientist has even uncovered evidence that rats "laugh". When happy, apparently, they emit a series of ultrasonic chirps, rather like children. Their ability to feel happiness is further evidenced by their unique method of purring when content in their masters' hands. They will also blow in your ear and lick away your tears, though they do have a maddening habit of ripping off your glasses.
Rat owners will next month celebrate the ninth World Rat Day to help overturn the "ignorance and unthinking prejudice" that surrounds their favoured pet. Admittedly, Arundel's three rats are as different from wild rats as "a corgi is from a wolf" he says, though they are still highly bred brown rats. When you get up close and personal, you do start to see the attraction.
For Colin Arundel, rats are a passion that link back to a time when people were closer to nature. "I hate it when MPs and others say they are supposed to be vermin or when they start slandering rats. I would rather trust a rat than a politician. They show you loyalty. They treat me like a big brother," he says.
As I snuggle back in my chair, rats nibbling my ears and purring in my arms, I feel tempted to agree. It's time to forget that terrible night in the grocer's shop, to put away the ratty horrors of those teen novels and start again – to understand this horribly traduced creature and maybe even learn to love it. After all, it seems to quite like me.
Thursday, 26 March 2009 article in: The Independent Newspaper by Jonathan Brown
Corrected lost ending to text 4th May 2010