The rodent pictured above – well-rounded, petite, and “out in the wild” – quite probably strikes you as “cute”, maybe even “adorable”.
But how about the longer-toothed, urban-invading ranks of Rattus norvegicus?
Allegedly, they are currently making themselves ever more “at home” inside our cities’ offices, shops and homes…
You can usually find a way in via the toilets. As a rat, you’re neophobic, which means you don’t like going places where you don’t feel safe. This makes you both hard to trap and unlikely to pop up while a human is actually sitting on the loo, much to the human’s relief. However, if an office is left empty with the central heating on, the water in a U-bend can evaporate and it might be worth risking the vertical migration from cold sewer to warm corporate setting.
The quotation is from Richard Godwin’s essay, “Are we losing the rat race?”, published in The Guardian of 07 February 2021.
Entertaining and informative, the essay’s perspective is wider/deeper/longer-term than a merely “COVID-eye” view.
As one of Godwin’s informants observed:
The way I see it, how we think about rats typically has more to do with us than rats.
Click here to read the essay.
(featured image is copyright Doug Spencer – photo taken in Bharatpur wetland, Keoladeo National Park, Rajasthan, India on 5th February 2020)