Author’s Note on Rats

 

Misunderstood and maligned, rats have had a bad rap for a very long time. From their ugly tails to bearing the blame for the bubonic plague, to the horror movie Willard, rats evoke cringes and disgust. One evening, while waiting for the Tube on the London Underground, I watched a group of commuters observe several rats running among the tracks. Comments from those who watched included words like dirty, disease, and disgusting. I admit I was no fan of rats for the longest time. My kids were and had several pet rats, which included a well-endowed white-and-gray male they named Popeye, who, when viewed from behind, dragged a magnificent pair of gonads that presaged the birth and growth of the village known as Ratville.

At this point in my professional life, I was busy, busy, busy. As a young minister, I was busy responding to most anyone’s needs other than my own family’s: I was busy being important, busy with an unending string of meetings, busy writing profound sermons. I was too busy to notice that two rats became eight, and soon sixteen, and so on. Ultimately, over forty rats lived in cages scattered through the house and backyard.

My children and their mother thought it best not to mention the growing collection, until one day I came home early and witnessed my kids and their mom in the backyard, calling the rats as if they were calling children for dinner. The rats, to my horror, were all out of their cages and roaming freely about the backyard. My jaw dropped when the rats responded to being called. “Here, ratty, ratty, ratty!” they called. And just as if they possessed the flute of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, the rats gathered around their feet, waiting for what was next.

My family had created a playground for the rats, using a child’s hard-plastic pool, a massive carpeted cat’s scratch post with little boxes to hide in, which one of them had found in the trash, and a long plank of wood that served as a ramp from one structure to the other. This architectural marvel had been branded Ratville, and the rats frolicked around the structure, running between the pool and the carpeted boxes on the scratch post, appearing to enjoy themselves and their freedom.

It reminded me a little of watching an ant farm, except with rats. If this wasn’t enough of a sight to behold, when the call went out that playtime was over, “Here, ratty, ratty, ratty!”—yep, you’ve guessed it—they all came and gathered around their keepers’ feet. My family knew all the rats by name, and each one was accounted for before it was lights out. They simply did not run away. And why would they? Life was good in Ratville.

Yes, it was crazy, but I gained a new appreciation for the intelligence of rats and their capacity and desire for companionship. Over time, it was understood that there was a population issue that was very much out of control, and the sexes were separated. Ratville diminished in population, ultimately becoming a ghost town.

Over the years, I have shared the story of Ratville many times with listeners who cringe and screw up their faces into expressions of terror, disgust, incredulity, and often sympathy as they consider forty or so rats running around the yard freely. I get that! But if you could have seen it … how they all came running when called … it was weird but amazing.

With that said, I invite you to meet, or perhaps reacquaint yourself with, Nathaniel, a rat who appeared in my first book, A Yorkie’s Tale: Lessons from a Life Well Lived. Back then Nathaniel went on something of a quest with his pal Niles, a Yorkshire terrier, to attempt to learn how one should live a good life, given their alarming discovery that life does not go on forever, as they had always believed. They learned a lot on that journey about what was important and what was perhaps not so important. But alas, with the passage of time, the lessons we all learn often fade, and what seemed profound way back when now seems rather mundane. And it appears Nathaniel, who is now old, is engaged in yet another existential crisis, wondering if there really is anything more to learn as he wanders rather aimlessly through the winter of his life.

I do hope you enjoy!

 

 

David L. Heaney

April 2020