Stuart's Not so Little

One phenomenon I've never tackled here is the ubiquity of the rat.

It's not uncommon to see them scurrying across the street or through the alleys, or even straight through your backyard garden and under your porch, where it seems likely they'll reproduce by the hundred-fold, only to dash across your bare feet some unsuspecting evening.

Some friends in the area are so at the end of their tether, they're considering digging out all their fruit trees and vegetable plants.
Don't do it, I've urged them, or the rat will be king!

I sometimes wonder, though, if it's time to reconsider the rat. Put some fur on their tails, and are they really so different from squirrels? Who among us hasn't imagined taking in a baby squirrel as a pet, feeding it milk from an eye dropper as it bonds with us like a kitten. Ah, sweet domestication.

My friend Kim from college had a pet female rat named Chuck, and she was a perfect companion. Here's a photo from the last day of Chuck's life, when cancer had so steeped her body that there was really no choice but to put her to sleep. (I don't know who that uncomely vagabond is holding her, but please forgive the fashion indiscretions. It was the eighties).

I'm starting to think that rats may simply have a PR problem. Exhibit A: The signs posted throughout alleys of my neighborhood, warning of the pestilence sure to befall us if we dare to leave our trash can lids open, inviting this saber-toothed monster to destroy us all.

There are City-sanctioned poisoning schedules for the rat. And I have to wonder what the reaction would be if the same campaign were waged against the pigeon, an equally hated example of metropolitan vermin. But widespread extermination? Would we really have the same bloodlust for a humble bird?

I guess that's why I'm so taken with an alley 4 blocks east of us, where the rat-warning signs have been punctuated by original art.

Why should our lamp and electric posts be used only to besmirch the poor rat? There are surely better things to do with our public display space, as this alley so agreeably reminds us.