Living With Rats
Author Joe Shute on the rat, and why we should rethink our relationship with a fellow urbanite - a longer post for full subscribers from our recent interview
I spoke to Joe Shute to try and learn how we should think about an intelligent small furry animal that’s lived among us for centuries, one that most of us see as a threat to our health and livelihood. Rats are vermin, and should be driven out of our homes and cities, surely? (Joe’s book: Stowaway: The Disreputable Exploits Of The Rat is out now, published by Bloomsbury.)
Joe introduces me to Reyta, who lives on his upstairs landing. She is rather beautiful, with inquisitive eyes and whiskers, and a friendly slow scurry as Joe scoops her up and hands her some small banana flakes to nibble. She sniffs my hand and I recoil when she seems about to nip my finger. She’s just checking you out, says Joe. “Would you like to pick her up?”
In the book, he describes a rat’s unique mouth parts, which give it an advantage over other rodents: powerful front teeth for gnawing, 12 molars at the back for chewing, and a gap called a diastema in the middle for storage, all of which make it possible for rats to eat all kinds of human discards with ease. Those sharp front incisors are capable of a 150kg biting force per square centimetre, more powerful relative to weight than a grizzly bear.
After a moment’s reflection, I decline to pick Reyta up, but watch as she clambers over her fellow householder. Joe was just as wary about rats as the average human in the past, after living nervously among them in Leeds and Vietnam, but after moving to a 120 year old Sheffield house near hidden underground brooks a few years ago, he found rats were living on the street too, and after they’d ransacked his kitchen when he and his wife Liz had been away for a few days, he took the usual measures with traps and bait to drive them out.
He killed one, but another trap failed to catch its target cleanly, and the rat appeared the next day, limping around his garden after attempting to steal some food from Joe’s chickens.
The rat was clearly struggling to see out of its left eye and was moving slowly with a limp. I watched it staggering around the garden, sticking closely to the wall as is a rat's nature, its long grey tail dragging dejectedly in the leaf litter. At one point it stumbled and fell into our pond. Even considering its dire condition, it still broke out in an effortless rat stroke to get to the other side.
I had never been able to look at a live rat for so long before. Normally any encounters would be a quick flash in front of me as my footsteps sent the rodents skittering in the undergrowth or diving for safety into a rat hole. Watching the animal up close, I noticed its long handsome whiskers and glossy chestnut coat; it had clearly been fattening up on the chicken pellets. Every few seconds it would stop and clean itself, rubbing its paws over its snout and ears, something I later discovered is a behavioural trait when rats are ill at ease.
I was gripped by a sense of guilt about my actions.
Watching this poor rat in such a helpless state, I realised how much my perceptions of the animal had been shaped by my own fears rather than the reality. When was I told that it was OK, indeed expected of me, to kill a rat? When exactly do we learn as children that some animals are more equal than others? Some are cute and encouraged to live in our homes and some must be expunged at all costs.
The book stems from this realisation, and takes Joe around the world learning how different countries approach the rodents who live among us. He bought a family of beautiful (but sadly, short-lived) fancy rats to observe and learn to love, as he and Liz gradually got used to their nocturnal scamperings. (The sound of uninvited feral rats in nighttime households could have led to the rat’s association with poltergeists, ghosts and witchcraft, it seems).
And Joe explores the River Sheaf, the Moss Valley and Castlegate to learn about Sheffield’s long history with rats, and hears how cities across the world are rethinking the rat problem.
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