there’s a rat in me kitchen
What am I going to do? So heralded the opening lines of UB40’s 1987 hit record. But, there’s a rat in me kitchen, what am I going to do? No, really.
There’s something apocalyptical about Rattus Norvegicus that gnaws at our modern human psyche and, according to the British Pest Control Association, the British rat population has boomed by 25% since the first lockdown, to over 150 million. Rats seldom get good press: they are instruments of torture in George Orwell’s 1984 and the embodiment of pure evil in HP Lovecraft’s The Rats in the Walls. The consensus is there’s nothing good about rats and all they do is mate, breed, eat and cause damage. Even the term ‘rodent’ comes from the Latin word for gnaw.
They become sexually mature at only twelve weeks, produce litters of around eight fellow rats and can mate again within 48 hours of giving birth. Their teeth are harder than iron and, pound for pound, their bite is six times stronger than that of a great white shark. A vertical waste pipe presents no problems whatsoever, as does your toilet U-bend at the top. They can easily survive a 50ft fall, tread water for three days and have been known to hold their breath for almost five minutes. Rats are clever, too, and have long-since sussed out most of our traps and snares. Being neophobic, they seldom venture into unknown places where they don’t feel safe and wisely prefer to avoid us like the proverbial plague.
But do we despise rats for the very things we recognise in our own make-up and self-image: their lust, filth, destruction and their unending, pointless consumption? When everything is out to kill the rat, do we secretly admire its resilience, tenacity and will to survive? Nah, I can’t be doing with any of that pyscho-babble just now and it’s me against my furry adversary, head-to-head. They don’t call it a rat race for nothing.
