Norwegians will be happy to know that the basic urban rat, known as the Rattus Norvegicus, is not, actually from Norway. It is said that the rats, originally from northern China, were stowaways on Norwegian ships and emigrated to Europe in the 18th century. They also used other methods of transportation to migrate such as trains and automobiles and have even resorted to swimming; in one particular case a large contingency swam across the Volga river to Russia.
In the past week I've seen two rats. A few days ago one hurried past me as I was coming out of Marks & Spencers. Today my cat was chasing (unsuccessfully) a rat outside. For all city dwellers, encountering a rat is a normal occurrence. Who hasn't seen rats scuttling down the tracks in the New York city subway? When you take out the garbage in Rome at night there are rats lurking around the bins like derelict teenagers. In Paris a friend had strapping rats scaling the wisteria plant that grew up the wall of her building. And some of us will never, ever, forget the story of Pete, the rat and the glue trap in New York. He may write about it someday.
Norwegian rats are apparently perfectly suited to city living as a result of their "opportunistic and omnivorous behavior".
Furthermore, "to know the rat is to know its habitat, and to know the habitat of the rat is to know the city" says Robert Sullivan in his 2004 book on New York City rats, Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants.
Do you know your rat's habitat?
2 comments:
Ah yes, the rat and the glue trap.
It was the summer of '88. Hottest summer in NYC history, and I don't care what the record books say.
That rat was in my kitchen. I lived in a sixth-floor walkup. Why would a rat climb six flights of stairs to parade around my kitchen?
So I went to the hardware store to get a trap but the springloaded traps looked like they'd entail more cleanup than I could handle, so I went for the glue trap. I didn't think about what you did next once you had a rat in a glue trap.
And it didn't take long before I did have one, squealing in protest, heaving itself across the floor by violently contracting its thick rat torso, dragging the plastic trap along with it. In another few seconds, the rat would have disappeared into the wall again, where it would summon all its rat friends to come and eat me alive.
So I slammed a plastic trash can down over the rat, trap and all, and weighted the can down with heavy art history books, and went out for a drink.
The girl next to me at the bar said, "Pour boiling water over it."
I said, "Then what?"
She said, "It will dissolve. Won't it?"
The bartender said, "What you need is a Louisville slugger."
I couldn't see any good options. The least awful one seemed to me to be sticking a broom to the glue, lifting the trap, and throwing broom, trap and rat out the window. After it hit the ground, it'd be somebody else's problem.
But when I lifted the trash can, all I saw was the glue trap, covered with ash-gray fur.
I probably screamed.
Later I noticed a hole the size of a quarter near the lip of the trash can and figured out what must have happened: The rat had gnawed a hole and pulled itself through, leaving the trap behind.
At the time, I used to tell people that the hole in the trash was perfectly aligned with the hole in the wall, but now I'm not sure I didn't make that up.
We still have rats in New York. We still have six-floor walkups. And the hardware stores still sell rat-sized glue traps to people who don't know any better. But you don't meet many bartenders anymore who tell you to get a Louisville slugger.
Fantastic Pete! And this was 20 years ago. We were all shaken by the story at the time. Some of us still are. The trap story reminds me of one summer when my mother and I were staying in Ascona, Switzerland, which is on a lake. The lake had risen and water rats were everywhere. My mother went to buy rat poison at the hardware store and they told her she had to get a permit from the town hall. When she asked why, they told her because it had been the most popular method used by Swiss hausfraus to kill their husbands....
Post a Comment