Voice for the Vermin

An Essay

This is the first of two animal related posts for this week. They are both inspired by recent stories I saw in my Google news feed last week and it is my hope that these posts will offer a ray of hope to the creatures they are written about.

Voice for the Vermin

If I should say the word, “vermin,” to you, which animal springs to mind first? I’m guessing that about 95% of you would automatically say, “the rat.” The other 5% would most likely be made up of mice, grey squirrels and pigeons with the occasional urban fox making an appearance.

Before I go any further in this discourse I’d like to posit the notion that an animal can only be classed as vermin by those who actually consider it one. The rat, for example, possibly the most maligned mammal on the face of the Earth make the most excellent and affectionate pets. My friend Shannon has two pet rats and they are the most delightful little things. To the best of my knowledge they’ve never bitten Shannon and I can honestly say that there was only the merest hint of a rodenteous odour when I saw them.

Shannon would certainly not consider rats as vermin.

Hang on, I think I just invented a new word – rodenteous.

I also recall working many years ago with a lady who was once persecuted in her local neighbourhood for her religious beliefs. One dark evening, in the depths of Winter, some unknown person or persons pushed 9 wild rats through her letterbox. This was obviously intended to strike fear into the poor woman with the hope that she might move from the area.

There was one teensy, tiny problem though.

Rats were that lady’s absolute favourite animal in the whole wide world.

She couldn’t have been happier if they’ed pushed fluffy kittens and excitable puppies through her letterbox. She spent a distinctly joyful hour or so going around the house gently picking up all the rats and putting them outside into the garden to fun free as nature intended. She received zero bites in the process and had the most delightful time in rounding those animals up.

I don’t know what happened to her after that because I changed jobs but I do know that the use of rats as a terror tactic failed miserably on her. And I for one am glad. One has to think hard about where the letterbox bandits got the rats from in the first place. Whilst susceptible to various poisons, wild rats can be notoriously difficult to catch alive.

They are highly intelligent animals you see.

So it must have taken the people who caught them a lot of time and effort to gather that many. And where did they get them? Did they launch an expedition into the sewers perhaps or maybe they have their own breeding program from which to source rats whenever they want to frighten someone. So I think it is simply brilliant that this “attack” failed so badly.

And from this we see two people (both ladies) who do not consider rats as vermin.

But I do understand where others are coming from when they use that term to describe rats. Farmers, livestock holders, restaurants, supermarkets and many other places do consider the rat to be vermin and the reason being that the rat is omnivorous and will eat pretty much anything and everything. So they will munch through bags of animal fodder and they will gnaw their way into boxes of human food and they will take whatever they can get.

The thing about rats is they are the world’s best opportunists. And the thing about human beings is we are such dirty buggers. Can you see what the problem is here? That’s right, rats will thrive wherever they and humans co-exist. The sad truth is that we make it so easy for the rat colonies to thrive and survive. We’re the reason there are so many of them. If we lived differently there would be fewer rats.

Some years ago I went into Bradford city centre with a friend to go and see a gig. It was a decent show and afterwards we felt that we needed to soak the beer up with some fast food and made our way to the nearest kebab and French fries retailer to partake of that particular meal.

As we staggered our way through the streets I became aware of lots of things moving on the ground. Upon closer inspection I determined that these things were in fact rats. Dozens of the beggars. As bold as you like, just wandering the streets looking for food like daytime bargain hunters. And the thing is they didn’t have to look very far for their bargains.

There were discarded pizzas, chips, burgers, kebabs, fried chicken, naan bread, you name it they were eating it. It would have been fascinating if it weren’t so horrific. These creatures were having an absolute feast thanks to the dirty behaviour of human beings and it made me ask the question – who really is the vermin here?

If the people hadn’t dropped food all over the pavements then the rats wouldn’t have been there in such large numbers.

As for myself, I’m not overly keen on rats but I think that’s probably down to the tail. Be honest now, if rats had similar tails to squirrels would they be so off-putting? We’d probably put food out for them if they had cute bushy tails. And squirrels are every bit the opportunists as well. Check out all the Youtube videos of them plundering bird feeders. But we don’t mind the squirrels do we, because of that tail?

I’m not like the lady I mentioned earlier. If a wild rat came into my home I’d be a tad unhappy about it, but I don’t think I’d go into full on screaming hysteria mode either. I grew up on a farm and saw these animals on a regular basis and despite what some people might say about them I was never attacked by one. If anything they are terrified of us. And with good reason, with all the new poisons that we keep inventing to eradicate them with.

The Google news feed article I mentioned at the start was about the discovery of an extremely large rat, measuring 22 inches from nose to tail that had been discovered behind a drywall of someone’s home. Obviously the article was fraught with the horror of it and the prospect of the world being taken over by these gigantic rodents. Alarmist journalism at its worst.

Here’s the truth about that particular rat:

· Most likely female

· Most likely heavily pregnant

· Most likely incredibly well fed on human detritus

· Incredibly rare at that size

Them’s the facts about that there rodent. We are not about to be overrun by giant rats. Do you remember not so many years ago that the tabloids were running with stories of monstrous mutant rats bein able to gnaw their way through concrete? If you believed that then you probably believe the moon is made of green cheese as well. Rats would need diamond tipped dentures to get through concrete.

So here’s the thing, if you should find yourself crossing paths with a rat at any time, just be courteous, give it room to manoeuvre and let it go on its way. They’re not normally aggressive unless cornered without an escape route. Also, do try and remember that in the event of a fight between yourself and a rat that you are approximately a hundred times bigger and heavier than the rat and therefore the contest would be a little one-sided.

I’m not suggesting for a moment that wild rats are in any way a friend of mankind (they do carry diseases) but they are not the evil beings they have been maligned as and they do a heck of a job cleaning up after us. The bottom line is – if you don’t want rats running around then stop being such a dirty so and so and clean up your mess.

There will be a second animal related post on Thursday.