Rats: NYC's hot new attraction!
‘Cause tourists are money
“You got rats on the West Side/Bed bugs uptown
What a mess, this town's in tatters, I've been shattered” (Mick & Keith)
When your empire is in decline, you lure in the tourists by offering them a front-row seat.
As a New York Post article recently blared “NYC tourists seeking authentic experience take late-night rat tours.”
“The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.” (Vladimir Ilich Lenin)
I can speak from firsthand experience as a lifetime resident. I have seen more rodents than ever in my own neighborhood in the last two years or so.
That includes, of course, the local subway stations:
Contrary to public opinion, however, the rat is quite a remarkable creature. Here’s a little something I dug up on the web:
The Norway rat is the only animal other than man which has been scientifically proven to both laugh and dream. No doubt many other animals do laugh, or dream, but only the Norway rat has been proven to.
Norway rats' cries are mainly ultrasonic, too high for most humans to hear, but with suitable electronic equipment, young rats can be heard giggling as they wrestle and play.
And researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reported that they’d monitored the brainwaves of rats while solving a maze, and while sleeping afterward, and found that the rats seemed to be running the maze again in their sleep.
None of the above means we want them around though. Here are some folks who’ve taken things to a macabre level (warning: this short video gets gruesome at times):
Meanwhile, there’s even more to learn about rats:
A pair of rats can produce 15,000 babies in one year.
Rats begin breeding as young as 5 weeks of age. Gestation lasts 21 to 24 days, and females can produce up to seven litters a year, each containing six to 22 young.
Rats are born hairless, pink-skinned, blind, and deaf. Their fur grows within 10 days.
Rats use their tails for many functions — balance, temperature control, and communication. It's important to note that you should never handle a rat by its tail. The skin is very sensitive and can cause great distress and even death to a rat.
A rat’s incisors never stop growing. Therefore, they must gnaw.
There’s a rat with a Substack!
Rats have highly developed senses, and their ability to climb, jump, burrow, and gnaw gives them entry to places inaccessible to many other small mammals.
Rats have no gallbladder. They cannot burp or vomit
Rats don’t have paws; they have hands and feet. They have glands on the bottom of their feet, so they leave a wet scent trail wherever they walk.
A rat’s heart beats 260-600 times in one minute.
Rat packs can include up to 60 individuals.
And, btw:
New Yorkers report about 400 rat bites per year.
New Yorkers report about 1,600 human bites per year.
Somehow, the word “rat” has become synonymous with betrayal. Maybe human disdain for this animal is envy-based. They can do so many things we can’t:
The average rat can fit through an opening that is just one-half inch wide.
Rats can breathe underwater for two minutes.
A rat can swim for three days before it drowns.
Rats can chew through concrete.
In a recent experiment, rats were pitted against college students to learn their way through a maze. The rats learned three times faster than the students.
I can still recall when people excitedly visited my hometown because of perks like our diverse music scene or to hang with the underground artsy crowd.
Today, well… who’s ready for fentanyl camps and photogenic rats?
“Go ahead, bite the Big Apple/Don’t mind the maggots”
(Mick & Keith again)
I’m not exactly sure what the next step to take is for us as a society — but I certainly won’t be asking any college students for help out of this sinister labyrinth.
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I will never again think of rats the same way! And knowing they giggle makes me want to protect them. Maybe instead of killing them, we can assign them Room 101 duty for the war criminals.
There's even a rat with a substack https://ratsays.substack.com