Rats.
From the off I should make it clear that this isn’t a Charlie Brown situation, when something mildly annoying happens and the word is uttered in response. No, I’m talking about actual, real you-know-whats.
During Covid, I was sitting at my kitchen table working from home, as the sun streamed in through the open sliding doors out into the garden. The sky was a tranquil, unblemished blue and although the world was coming to an end, or so we thought, it wasn’t going to happen on that particular day. It was all too perfect. The birds were singing. The bees were buzzing. There was a song in my heart. And then I noticed some movement in the garden. “Oh, wildlife,” I thought, “how wonderful”. This sentiment was barely in the process of making itself known, of gently and wistfully asserting its existence, when something much darker and primeval arose from the depths and promptly flattened it to the ground.
Before I knew it, I had as good as levitated from my chair and slammed that door shut. Ignoring whatever it was I was supposed to be doing, I went straight on to google and typed in “How to kill rats in Drumcondra”.
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Everyone wants to be in the loop. But what if there is no loop?
We all have stories to tell. The accepted belief is that rats are there, always there, but we just don’t see them. Really? I’m not so convinced. Whenever I tell my story (which, to my credit, is only occasionally around a dinner table) the reaction I get is generally along the lines of “Okay, interesting … interesting … but have a listen to THIS!“.
I know someone who was sitting on a sofa and suddenly became aware of a scratching deep within. They had recently work done to their house and a rat had made its way through a faultily laid pipe and somehow got into the sofa. Yes, I know. The only appropriate response would have been to set the sofa alight right there and then, followed soon after by the entire house.
And they did come close. They moved out until the pipe had been fixed and the house fumigated, bleached, sterilised and disinfected.
Another friend saw something like concentric circles in her garden. She’d been away on holiday and was utterly taken in by this wondrous appearance. Nature, she’d mused, how humbling, how thrilling. Until, that is, she discovered what version of nature it was and on the spot arranged to concrete right over it.
Yet someone else, much hardier and braver than your average individual, had gone into her attic to remove the bodies of dead specimens she knew were there. But she got a stitch, lay down and momentarily couldn’t move. There she was prostrate on the attic floor staring at a dead rat. “You have to laugh,” she said as she told her story, “life can be funny”. She was recounting the event to me and my concrete-over-the-concentric-circles friend. Neither of us could raise a smile. “It’s like a horror story”, my buddy muttered.
Of course, it’s their power that’s the issue here. The power to remove the veneer of civilisation. To scrape it right back. The very thought of them awakens something repulsive and abhorrent deep within us. We obviously weren’t around for the Great Plague or possibly other rat-driven catastrophes but the communal memory is embedded in our DNA.
Mice don’t even come close. Their fleetness of foot, their ability to scurry and scamper, their propensity to squash and squeeze into the teeniest, tiniest gap elicits its own response, which is different. Very different. More high-pitched, to be sure. More nerve-rattling, oddly. More jumpy and jittery, absolutely. But different.
Only recently, a neighbour recounted hearing a rattling from her toaster which she attempted to ignore. But it persisted. Forced to investigate, she shook the offending appliance, at which point a mouse jumped out. “You didn’t hear?” she asked matter-of-factly. “I was so sure you’d have heard”. And, of course, I knew she wasn’t talking about the mouse.
My own most memorable mouse encounter was in a classroom. I was teaching in an old, listed building and any number of mice had taken up residence within. But none, up to then, had been foolish enough to make an appearance in front of 25–30 seven-year-olds. The place went – let me think about the correct educational term here – oh yes, mad. But the children didn’t launch themselves on to their desks. They were curious. Fascinated. They chased after the mouse, somehow managing to corner it. The mouse ended up pressed against the wall, its heart pounding like something out of a cartoon. I had to part the group to allow a getaway route, of which the mouse enthusiastically availed.
Rats and mice. They’re there. Always there. And chances are, when we’re long gone, there is where they’ll be.
