"Ben, the exterminator, is particularly suspicious of any plan to get rid of rats that doesn’t involve their death. ‘Starving them out doesn’t get rid of rats, it only moves them onto a less disciplined building — there’s always someone a bit messier, a bit less organized than you are,’ he said. ‘Even if you manage to get everybody up to the same level of cleanliness, rats won’t starve —they’ll just get more desperate. Instead of living in your basement, they’ll live in your cupboards. I wouldn’t be surprised if they eventually learned to open the fridge.’" [page 204]

Profoundly disturbing, strange, and weirdly interesting, RAT: How the World’s Most Notorious Rodent Clawed Its way to the Top by Jerry Langton [2007, St. Martin’s Press, 208 pages] is also quite funny and can only leave the reader with two options: a shower and a grudging admiration of the rodent from hell.

If people are convinced that cockroaches are the only insect that will survive Armageddon, I’m certain that the rat will be there too (in twos and threes, and fours). People, not so much. In fact, it seems that the only creature more invasive and destructive than the rat is man. Chew on that.

The rat survives by its wits, its hyper senses, and its reproductive power. The rat is a strange alchemy of survival mechanisms. And, they love to eat and have sex. Man’s best friend? Not so much, but perhaps we have been underestimating these rodents for far too long. With Idiocracy taking place daily in the United States, it’s probably not too smart to write off the rat as beneath us.

Langton’s book is a stunner of rodent knowledge and tales of man’s centuries old war against them. So far, the rat is winning. Man has only managed to win a few skirmishes and keep things to a draw in others.

The rat can breed effortlessly. It can give birth every twenty-eight days in ideal conditions (nursing one litter while pregnant with another):

”It’s possible, then, for a three-year old rat to have given birth to forty-three different litters, up to 516 separate births. When her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren get into the act, it’s possible for her to be responsible for up to 16,000 offspring in a single year, and the number approaches 100,000 if she lives for three years.” [pages 17-18]

Langton came upon the rat story through his work as a newspaper reporter (Hamilton Spectator, The Daily News, The Toronto Star and others). He is now somewhat of a rodent expert on the anecdotal level. People love to tell him their rat stories, whether they be a farmer trying to keep them out of grain silos; the guys who work in the sewers of our cities, large and small; the exterminator; or the guy who had a rat fall on his head while cleaning out a garage. It’s all there in RAT, including Langton’s interactions with an even weirder species: the people who sing rats’ praises and keep them as pets.

"All would be in some way or another considered eccentric, usually proudly so. All had strong, usually antiestablishment, political views that they are pleased to share. Many had tattoos, piercings or other look-at-me adornments. Many expressed an interest in science fiction, fantasy, and/or medieval times. Many were vegetarians. Many talked with cutesy jargon. Many were engaged in noncommercial art and all made clear their distain of mainstream culture . . . ." [pages 89-90]

The rat owners he met liked to think of themselves as superior to others, and, predictably, railed against the persecution of the rat as a dirty creature that brings disease wherever it goes. Mind you, these are people who usually have rat pee on their shoulder. Langton’s interaction with the rat people is quite amusing throughout the book.

One of the other more interesting aspects of the book is Langton’s discussion on the history of man and rat as it relates to species introduction and extinction. Man has, regrettably, introduced the rat into areas where it becomes a dangerous predator and wipes out native species. This has happened throughout history, either inadvertently (rats are natural stowaways), or through somebody’s bad idea. And, just recently man had to intervene to restore natural balance to an island off New Zealand and exterminate the rats that wreaked havoc on the native species and habitat. There have been other such occurrences as well, leaving the reader with the general impression that rats are the last ones to invite to a party for the apocalypse. They’ll never leave.

RAT is a well-done and researched topic, and Langton writes with a breezy tone throughout even as he discusses some distasteful goings-on. Rat lovers will, undoubtedly not be amused, but I found it a well done and relatively fair presentation (three stars).

Sources
www.stmartins.com

Recommended: Yes