Further hallmarks of city life.

[rivka]

Okay, that was weird.

A moment ago, I glanced out my kitchen door into our courtyard. My eye caught a movement that I processed as "squirrel" - but a second glance corrected that. No, no, it was definitely a rat. A big fat one, resembling nothing more than a shaved-tailed squirrel. It was hunched over in the middle of the courtyard, licking its little paws.

I opened the kitchen door and stepped onto the tiny porch. The rat backed up halfway into a hole in the fence and sat there, watching me. It wasn't until I walked all the way down into the main part of the courtyard that it disappeared entirely through the hole.

I've always known that I could expect to encounter rats in the city. Baltimore has a notorious rat population. Rats are the reason why we're blessed with free garbage pickup twice weekly - it's certainly not because the city is concerned with our comfort and convenience - and why we put our garbage out in a stout plastic barrel with a tight-fitting cover instead of in plastic bags on the street. I didn't expect to see rats in the house - mice, maybe, but rats are something I only associate with the worst slums - but I certainly expected to see them in the street.

I expected my first urban rat encounter to be scary and disgusting. I didn't expect the rat to look... well, like a wild animal. Like a ground squirrel or a woodchuck or any of the other rodents I've encountered in natural settings. I felt about the same way I would if I saw a raccoon in my yard - cautious, because they carry diseases, and wary, because they can be an annoyance. But not horrified. Not squicked. That feels weird.

(My apologies to womzilla, supergee, and nellorat for any implied slighting of your rat friends. None was intended.)

Comments

[ewtikins.livejournal.com]

Ditto for living in London. We had a rat living in our garden for a little while (Somebody, I'm not sure who, didn't rinse the tuna tins out properly and then put them outside 'until the recycling guys come' and left them there for a month. Not bright.) and it made me uneasy... but not disgusted. I knew it couldn't get into the house, save through a wide-open door. I wanted to do something about it because unforunately one rat very often means in a little while there will be many rats - I'm not sure how long the gestation period is for rats but it isn't terribly long. I hummed and hawed - I did not want to kill it, and I didn't know how to scare it away.

In the end, a few weeks ago there was a rat hit by a car down the road, and I suspect it was 'our' rat, because I have not heard any vague rustlings from the bushes since, and the garden has been pretty thoroughly de-weeded.

I feel kindof sorry for it, to be honest, but at the same time relieved because it is one less problem for me to deal with.

[klwalton.livejournal.com]

We get raccoons, opossums and roof rats. The opossums are quite the ugliest animals I've ever seen - the rats look downright cuddly by comparison.

[mittelbar.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I saw one in San Francisco, and thought it was a muskrat at first. You *really* don't want them in your house, but they aren't especially upsetting to look at.

Now possums...talk about a squick-inducer!

[ladyotterfae.livejournal.com]

speaking as one who has a whole colony of wild rats living in the backyard back home..they're pretty harmless creatures, and actually quite attractive, in their own way. They're more of a danger in the city, of course, because of crowding and disease, but that's hardly their fault.

as for possums, you'd look bedraggled too if you were an easily startled, easily blinded scavenger who everybody thinks of as nasty. I've had a pet possum rescued off the road. they clean up very nicely, and they're very affectionate.

[elynne.livejournal.com]

So perhaps now you can understand my observation that squirrels are diurnal aboreal rats with fluffy tails and better press? ;) It's not a slight to squirrels at all - just that they're almost exactly the same animal; except that where people go "aww how cute" at squirrels, they tend to go "ack eek nasty" at rats, which I think is silly. The squirrels in our neighborhood are far more annoying than the rats; they beat up cats, tear open garbage bags, chew holes in walls, all the stuff that rats are notorious for. But they have fluffy tails!

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

... and bigger eyes, and they're somewhat less furtive. But I think that rats (http://www.panix.com/~kjm/rats/) are adorable, even in the wild.

Hmm.... need to get some more recent photos up.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

why betsy lives in minnesota, part seven thousand and eightysix.

(and i used to have a pet rat, you understand...)

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Does this mean you won't come to visit now?

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

will you promise to protect me from scary rodents?

Re:

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I protected you from Her Majesty the squirrel, didn't I?

Re:

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

but her majesty isn't scary!

Re:

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Okay, now you're in trouble I can't protect you from.

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

I think wild rats are rather cute. A greasy city sewer rat might be another thing though...

My guess is that squirrels and rats probably carry the same sorts of diseases and other "ick" (rabies, hantavirus, plague, ticks, fleas), but the big differences are that 1) Squirrels are cuter (the fluffy tail DOES do wonders for PR) and 2) Rats are more likely to live in close contact with humans. I'd worry more about a rat trying to get into my house than a squirrel.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

Plastic bags on the sidewalk?

I'm now wracking my brain trying to remember whether my parents used to do that way back when before LA bought automated garbage trucks.

wildlife

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

I like rats. I've had several as pets. I was still somewhat non-plussed when I lived in a place where I would see a number of them scatter whenever I walked out into my parking spot. (Including one time where one ran over the toe of my boot.)

There was a house I lived in for a few years in Guelph, Ontario where the backyard ended on a small river. The river was full of carp, catfish and bass, and we had regular visitors of geese, pigeons, swans, ducks, racoons, beavers, muskrats, herons, rats and squirrels along with a ton of songbirds and at least one hawk that was there for all the fine dining.

It was great. I used to sit in the backyards at dusk just to watch the traffic. I even saw a deer once, following the riverbed.