Blumen -- Rats in Literature: Beyond the Cloaca

Rats in Literature:

Beyond the Cloaca

Daniel L. Blumen

Presented December 20, 2004 at The Chicago Literary Club

"Matilda Briggs was not the name of a young woman, Watson," said Holmes in a reminiscent voice. "It was a ship which is associated with the giant rat of Sumatra, a story for which the world is not yet prepared."[1]

This quote from the remarkable Holmes was most likely my first exposure to a rat of any sort and it inspired all sorts of dark thoughts. Rats weren’t a feature of life in the small upstate New York town where I was born and raised. But to the mind of a young boy, giant rats coming from Sumatra must surely be amazing creatures, potentially as fearsome as the Baskerville hound that cost me so much sleep.

Fast-forward a few decades and the same boy, now a man was touring the canals of Malacca. The owner of the boat was proud to have me and my family as customers for the afternoon and regaled us with too many stories in his version of the Queen’s English.

Rounding a bend we saw numerous Monitor lizards sunning themselves on the rock walls bordering the canal. For the uninitiated, Monitor lizards are ugly, aggressive and can grow up to six feet in length. Forget neighboring Indonesia’s giant rat, there were weird animals right here in Malaysia. Real ones.

Far from expressing any embarassment at this reptilian spa, our guide pointed out that the Monitor lizards were proof of the canal’s cleanliness – and therefore ultimately the wisdom of Mahatir Mohammed. The government was proud of the lizards who, by their residence were proof that there were no rats in the river.

In between these literary and spoken encounters with rats, rat perceptions were imprinted on my brain in relentlessly negative fashion. People were referred to as “dirty rats”, history taught me that rats were responsible for plagues and movies such as Willard celebrated the collective evil of the species.

It therefore came as something of a shock when my son asked for a pet rat in an effort to keep up with his sister’s Guinea Pig. Paws, the rat version of the famous shark “Jaws” entered our home and didn’t take long to make herself popular with the entire family. This included the cats whose interest was less benign than that of the humans. She was a pleasant brown and white color and a great bargain at $2.50.

Paws made her home in a 10 gallon aquarium that she neatly sectioned by function; eating, sleeping, recreation and cloaca. As a practical matter, she also functioned as an alarm clock in the morning. When placed in my son’s bed she would tickle him by running through his pajamas looking for leftover food. Sleep being impossible, getting out of bed became, as we used to say, a viable alternative.

Paws gave my world view of rats pause. She couldn’t be the sort of creature referred to in Wolfgang Borchert’s tale “Nachts schlafen die Ratten doch” – At Night the Rats Sleep, Too. This is the story about a young child in immediate postwar Germany. The child is afraid to go to sleep at night due to fear of rats in the ruins of his bombed out city. He is reassured by an adult that sleeping is okay because the rats must also sleep at night. Borchert obviously had no experience with rats as they definitely do not sleep at night, but it makes for a good story.

There are some undeniable facts about rats that provide a solid basis for the child’s fearful imaginings. They don’t just travel in pajamas but through sewers and garbage. This proximity to people poses disease risks that include the various forms of plague that is spread from rats to people by the oriental rat flea. Round this out with Salmonellosis, Rat Bite Fever, Leptospirosis, Lymphocytic choriomeningitis, trichinosis, typhoid and dysentery and you can rapidly lose whatever sympathy for rats that Paws may have been able to inspire.

Or, as Robert Browning put it in his version of the celebrated tale of the Piper of Hamlin:

“Rats!

They fought the dogs, and killed the cats,

And bit the babies in the cradles,

And ate the cheeses out of the vats,

And licked the soup from the cook's own ladles,

Split open the kegs of salted sprats,

Made nests inside men's Sunday hats,

And even spoiled the women's chats,

By drowning their speaking

With shrieking and squeaking

In fifty different sharps and flats.”[2]

This European view of rats is somewhat at odds with the view of the rat in Chinese culture. Rats are considered a symbol of good luck in China and people born in the year of the rat are expected to possess qualities associated with rats such as honesty, generosity and ambition while being clever, quick-witted and quick-tempered. If you were born in 1924 you are a rat. The more youthful should add twelve to this year until arriving at their own birth year. The more ancient are simply to be congratulated.

Pity poor Paws leading her brief life with these conflicting stereotypes of her species. She had a delightful disposition and would come when called, enjoying nothing so much as to watch the world go by from a friendly shoulder, munching on a nice Walnut.

Paws was part of our family for several years until a growing malignancy became too obvious to ignore. The grace with which she bore this suffering was remarkable and led me, in a moment of weakness, to take her to a veterinarian. The vet’s kindness in explaining to my son that surgery was possible but unlikely to provide any long term relief for Paws was appreciated. As was her willingness to forgo the $250 fee for hospitalizing and performing elaborate surgery on an aging rodent that cost $2.50.

Paws is buried in back of our family home. Her remains rest in a wooden cigar box lined with Thai silk that sits inside a brick crypt neath the earth. Who knows what future generations will think.

Other fathers have felt the spirit of the rat. Kenneth Grahame wrote “The Wind in the Willows” for his son while employed as a secretary at the Bank of England. He anthropomorphizes the river rat well. The rat in this story describes the river to his friend the mole thusly:

“It's brother and sister to me, and aunts, and company, and food and drink, and (naturally) washing. It's my world, and I don't want any other. What it hasn't got is not worth having, and what it doesn't know is not worth knowing.”[3]

The rat in this book is a friendly fellow. Certainly not the sort of animal that can apply a biting pressure of 7,000 pounds per square inch, produce 15,000 offspring in a year and fit through a hole no bigger than its skull. Rodentia are one of the most successful branches of the mammal family. There are somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 species of rodent, and rats are found on all continents with the exception of Antarctica and in most habitats except for the oceans and seas.

Two species of rat are of importance to us in the United States; the Roof, or Tree Rat and the Norway or Brown Rat. Additional rat varieties include field rats, wharf rats and sewer rats. The Roof Rat has a long tail, large ears and a slender body. Commonly found in trees, attics and old houses it’s also the number one rat in the inner city. Norway Rats have small ears, short tails, and a fat, rounded body. They are commonly found in fields, sewers and are the primary species infesting barns and poultry houses in rural areas.

These facts were of little importance to the two rats who joined the family following the demise or our beloved Paws. Mars and Venus – names selected by the younger generation in preference to the more dignified Siegfried and Brunnhilde came from different pet stores in an effort to avoid the sort of problems that afflicted the Romanovs and other royal families.

We yielded to this pressure for rats of the opposite sex in love and ignorance providing only a 20 gallon acquarium to welcome the new additions. In relatively short order proof of their conjugal relationship appeared in the form of eleven kittens. Venus banished Mars from the nursery which was a shoebox inside their home. So Mars sat on the roof of the box and ate and watched the world oblivious to the fact that his youthful master was enjoying the Redwall series of books by Brian Jacques.

In this series of children’s books, the heroes are peace-loving mice, moles, shrews, squirrels, and their friends who exhibit human characteristics in a medieval setting. The dark side is represented by rats, weasels, stoats and foxes. Won’t anyone give the poor rat a break?

The custom of keeping rats as pets is older that one might think. In the modern age it may have begun with Jack Black, the official rat catcher to Queen Victoria. Black didn’t just catch rats. When he came upon unusually colored rats he bred them to establish new varieties. He would sell his domesticated rats as pets and Beatrix Potter may well have been one of his customers. Her book “Samuel Whiskers and The Roly-Poly Pudding” is about a large rat who accidentally makes Tom Kitten part of his roly-poly pudding and is dedicated to her pet rat of the same name.

Evidently the more sophisticated ladies of the Victorian court kept their rats in gilded cages and Queen Victoria herself is supposed to have kept a rat or two. Black’s rats came from the Norwegian, or rattus norvegicus type and it is these rats, known as Fancy Rats – or Mars and Venus – that are the principal pet breed we know today.

Chicagoan Carl Sandburg offers a grittier view of rats in the fourth of his Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind:

“The feet of the rats

scribble on the door sills;

the hieroglyphs of the rat footprints

chatter the pedigrees of the rats

and babble of the blood

and gabble of the breed

of the grandfathers and the great-grandfathers

of the rats.”[4]

As matters now stand, this paper has simply presented a fair and balanced reportage regarding rats in a number of contexts. It has not dealt with the subject matter of the paper, Rats in Literature: Beyond the Cloaca. Readers and Club Members should now have some basic information on the general nature of rats and some inklings of their place in literature. Cloacae may be another matter.

The Oxford English Dictionary[5] offers four definitions for cloaca. The first is “an underground conduit for drainage, a common sewer” or “water-closet”. The second deals with an indelicate part of the anatomy of monotremate mammals and the third is a “passage for morbid matter” which helps fill in the blanks for number two. The last is “a receptable of moral filth” with the OED including an example phrase dealing with a stock exchange.

The first Roman sewers were built between 800 B.C. and 735 B.C. and preceded the aqueduct by almost 500 years. The largest of these was called the Cloaca Maxima and those with direct experience of Italian plumbing will not be surprised to know that it is still in use. All streets emptied into a channel of the Cloaca Maxima which was to carry off whatever was placed in its path. From the rodent’s perspective, a constantly refreshed buffet.

As regards moral filth, Theodore Dreiser notes the propinquity of rats and money in his book “The Financier”

“The banking house of Jay Cooke & Co., in spite of its tremendous significance as a banking and promoting concern, was a most unpretentious affair, four stories and a half in height of gray stone and red brick. It had never been deemed a handsome or comfortable banking house. Cowperwood had been there often. Wharf-rats as long as the forearm of a man crept up the culverted channels of Dock Street to run through the apartments at will.”[6]

The question this modest paper seeks to answer is: what is it about rats that makes them figure so prominently in our lives and therefore our litereature? The famous bacteriologist Hans Zinsser offers a closely reasoned explanation in his scientific work “Rats, Lice and History”. Zinsser writes:

“...[T]he natural history of the rat is tragically similar to that of man … some of the more obvious qualities in which rats resemble men--ferocity, omnivorousness, and adaptability to all climates ... the irresponsible fecundity with which both species breed at all seasons of the year with a heedlessness of consequences, which subjects them to wholesale disaster on the inevitable, occasional failure of the food supply.... [G]radually, these two have spread across the earth, keeping pace with each other and unable to destroy each other, though continually hostile. They have wandered from East to West, driven by their physical needs, and--unlike any other species of living things--have made war upon their own kind. The gradual, relentless, progressive extermination of the black rat by the brown has no parallel in nature so close as that of the similar extermination of one race of man by another...”

A similar sentiment, expressed in poetry comes from William Lowencamp in the last stanza of “Rats in the Cellar”

“I will fight to remain in position

And I will fight to make a draw

And I will side with no one special

For we are the rats in the cellar—all.”[7]

Or more simply from Robert Sullivan in an interview with National Public Radio:

“I think that the reason we don't like rats is because they so expertly, so perfectly, point out exactly how vile we humans are.”[8]

Sullivan turned his experiences with rats into a book, “Rats: Observations on the History & Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants”. Readers learn about Kit Burns who owned one of New York’s rat fighting bars, "The Sportsman's Hall". In 1840 it was supposed to hold 250 decent people and 400 indecent ones. Burns pitted dogs, other rats, and even men against live rats he bought by the sack-load.

Venus was a wonderful mother. Unlike her contemporary human counterparts there was no need for her to schedule soccer practice, riding lessons and play dates. But there were other challenges. Mealtime was a complicated affair given that there were eleven kittens and six place settings. Despite this issue, things seemed to go off without a hitch and the kittems were licked, nuzzled and in general made to feel cared for.

As they grew, Mars was allowed off the roof and the extended family began to think of where the children should go when it came time for them to leave. The local pet store offered $1.00 for each healthy kitten. Quick witted readers will note the 60% margin on each prospective transaction. But the shop owner was no mere financial engineer. The truly savvy will recognize that the extra food purchased to transition the kittens from breast to store could be a significant source of profit.

Of the original eleven, the fastest and most vigorous – Speedy - stayed within our home. More on Speedy later. But the close ties between humans and rats that Zinsser observes can also be seen in medicine.

Back in the 1920’s, sweet clover was used as hay for cattle in the northern US and Canada. Sweet clover contained coumarin that gave the clover its distinctive sweet odor, similar to vanilla. Dried, this formed hay for consumption by the herds. This was also a period of very wet summers that coincided with an epidemic of “bleeding disease” in cattle. Some fancy epidemiology by veterinarians traced the problem to improperly cured sweet clover. The sweet clover had become infected with molds that metabolized the coumarin into dicoumarol, a potent anticoagulant.

Following much research and work by Karl Paul Link, this anticoagulant – dicoumarol - was released into clinical medicine where it became a ready alternative to heparin. Physically ill, Link took a six month sabbatical in 1945. But while the scientific body might be at rest, the mind is ever active. It was during this time that Link conceived of dicoumarol as a rat poison. The idea was simply to overdose the rats with dicoumarol until they hemorrhage uncontrollably and die.

This was a profound insight that addressed the physical and mental challenges in rat control. Rats, as intelligent creatures were quick to avoid fast acting poisons. If Rat A observed that Rats B and C died quickly after dining from a particular food source Rat A would associate the food source with their death. But this slow acting approach to rat control foiled the rat’s powers of association and proved to be an effective form of pest control. Anticoagulants are now an accepted and effective chemical means of eradicating rats.

Link, by the way, was employed by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation – WARF which is why the rat poison is known as Warfarin. And also why a large amount of Warfarin is manufactured in Wisconsin to this day. There is considerable irony in the fact that the pharmaceutical version of Warfarin, Coumadin, has become the drug of choice in many clinical applications despite numerous fatal complications including the risk of massive internal bleeding.

It’s difficult to say if portrayals of rats in literature are more positive than negative. For every Redwall series where rats represent the dark side there are positive portrayals such as Kenneth Grahame’s river rat. Films, however are another matter. Fievel is a good rat, and there are film versions of Wind in the Willows and Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH where rats are portrayed in a positive way.

But in the more than 25 film synopses that I reviewed these were the exception and not the rule. Francis Ford Coppola's "Bram Stoker's Dracula" was made in 1992. In this film Van Helsing locates the vampire who appears to be asleep. Not so as Dracula morphs into a hord of rats that rush toward Van Helsing. In Werner Herzog’s 1979 movie "Nosferatu the Vampyr" Herzog is said to have let 15,000 rats loose in Delft. As it is unlikely that all rats were recovered, there are probably a considerable number of movie extras and their offspring running around this medieval town best known for its pottery. These films, and others, like Willard use rats to scare. It’s therefore discouraging, but entirely unsurprising that Franz Hippler used rats to support Nazi anti-Jewish feeling in his 1940 film “The Eternal Jew”.

Walt Disney who was known to have disliked cats, disliked rats even more. In his film “Lady and the Tramp”, the evil Siamese cats fail to see the threat to their host’s baby. But the noble Tramp, a mutt with no pedigree sees the rat near the baby and triumphs in his battle to save the baby and find acceptance with the human family.

Rats, while undeserving of the libel they generally receive in film, are not universally virtuous. Following Venus’ third pregnancy we made the decision to separate the productive couple placing Venus in a 10 gallon acquarium adjacent to the 20 gallon acquarium occupied by Mars and their son Speedy. Venus relished life as a single female and, cats notwithstanding, enjoyed escaping from her home to frolic in the clutter of an adolescent room where she was able to blend in physically. She was also safe from the cat’s keen sense of smell, protected by the olfactory result of juvenile hygiene.

She pre-deceased Mars and Speedy who lived on for some time. Their relationship was not a healthy one and Speedy was the next to die; obese, abused and anything but speedy towards the end. Mars met his higher power within about six weeks. Funerals for this generation of rats were more modest than for Paws although burial took place in the same general area.

Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comic strip offers us Ratbert as a reasonably regular character. As described in dilbert.com:

“Ratbert is a simpleminded optimist. He wants nothing more than to be loved, but he's doomed to ratdom which, despite his cheerfulness, makes him an unlikely candidate for affection. His resiliency enables him to continually be the butt of everyone's jokes.”[9]

While Adams and others celebrate, libel or anthropomorphize the rat many others, besides Jack Black, make their living in reducing the rat population. Man has created the RatZapper 2000. This device attracts the rat into a small chamber where the electrical charge from 4 AA batteries induces a lethal cardiac arrhythmia. Twenty seconds following the initial charge there is a subsequent shock to ensure efficacy following which a light then blinks on top of the RatZapper to let you know it needs to be emptied.[10]

Another rat control tool is the glue board. These are often used indoors and operate like a man made version of the La Brea tar pits. The rat steps into glue and is unable to get away. This method is inexpensive but is not recommended by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) because it causes a cruel death to the rat as the animal trying desperately to free itself, becomes covered in glue and suffocates.[11]

Poison, mentioned earlier in this paper can be delivered through a Protecta Bait Station which is effective but, like the motel in Hitchcock’s movie “Psycho”, unsightly. Accordingly there is the RatRock that looks like a rock on the outside but contains an inner chamber where the poison is protected from moisture, pets and children. It’s manufacturer claims that that the RatRock is “[g]reat for use around homes, office buildings, restaurants, hospitals, and other structures where outdoor control of rats and mice is necessary.”[12]

Despite these horrors we welcomed yet another rat into our family. Bubbles was the purest white with red eyes that perched like, well, bubbles on her soft white head. The following poem, Rat, by an unknown writer hints at the joy and affection that Bubbles stirred in all who knew her:

“Speak of the loveliness of paws,
each delicate grey toe, soft
as bunting, each arch lifting
finely in its practiced way.

Notice the pink cupped ears,
thin, translucent, glowing
like light between our fingers held
to flame, soft ears ruffling
as leaves at the slightest
breath of something not its own
and not its own heard stirring.

See how the nose will lift then, testing
the warm brown night for sound,
each whisker ending in a point of light
from fire burned low enough for sleeping,
each eye a wet black stone.

We sleep lightly, worlds away
from what is yielding grace
behind our bureaus, between
stacked logs, wherever night
permits the secret showing-forth.”[13]

Bubbles made her home in the duplex vacated by Mars and Speedy. Her vigor was such that the wire mesh roof needed ten pounds of weight to keep her in residence. She enjoyed walks around the house taking the vantage of a human shoulder the way a Maharajah would an elephant. In sum, she was the perfect companion to young and old.

But rats are not just companions. African rats have a fine sense of smell that helps them identify landmines. They’re better than dogs, which are easily bored or, because of their size, fall victim to the mines themselves. And dogs demand constant affection and reward.

Rats are also better than metal detectors, which cannot distinguish between metal and explosives. And the price of this service: bananas and peanuts. As Zinsser observed rats are omnivorous but that doesn’t mean that, like humans, they don’t have their favorite foods. To really understand rat preferences I suggest a visit to www.ratrescue.org and their treats page.

Among the many recipes on offer, Yummie Rattie Rolls stands out because it it not only a treat but can be used to embed medication for a diseased rat. Briefly, the recipe requires 1 teaspoon overripe banana, 1/8 teaspoon butterscotch flavored sundae topping, 1/2 teaspoon, or more to taste, toasted wheat germ and all-purpose flour as needed.

The author of the recipe, Mary Macdonald of Kirkland, Washington instructs us to:

”Mash the banana, then mix with butterscotch syrup. Sprinkle with wheat germ and mix. Keep adding wheat germ until the mixture is semi-firm. Sprinkle some flour on waxed paper and shape the dough into the shape of a Tootsie Roll. Sprinkle with more flour and cut the roll into slices, using flour to keep them from sticking together. Give a slice to your rat! You can wrap any left over "cookies" in waxed paper and refrigerate them for up to four days, or they can be frozen.”

On a more sinister note, from the rat’s perspective, is an entry in the 1977 edition of “Larousse Gastronomique”.

“Rats nourished in the wine stores of the Gironde were at one time highly esteemed by the coopers, who grilled them, (after having cleaned out and skinned them) on a fire of broken barrels, and seasoned them with a little oil and plenty of shallot. This dish, which was then called cooper’s entrecote, would be the origin of the entrecote a la bordelaise.”[14]

Rats also figure in the bible. The Philistine’s, having seized the ark of the covenant suffered considerably for this theft. They consulted their priests and diviners who advised them to send it back to the Israelis along with a guilt offering. Specifically:

"Five gold tumors and five gold rats, according to the number of the Philistine rulers, because the same plague has struck both you and your rulers. Make models of the tumors and of the rats that are destroying the country, and pay honor to Israel's god. Perhaps he will lift his hand from you and your gods and your land.”[15]

It’s worth noting that this citation is from the New International Version. Diligent scholars can go to other versions that substitute mice for rats. Having raised mice, hamsters, gerbils, Guinea Pigs and rats I find the New International Version offers a more reliable source of the scourge because the rat’s physical and mental powers are far superior to those of the other rodents.

Some support for my view comes from the story of the German Bishop Hatto and his tower. During a period of famine, the prosperous bishop is accused of luring peasants into a barn on the pretext of feeding them, only to burn them alive, laughingly comparing them to rats. Can you guess how Robert Southey describes God’s judgement on this wicked bishop? Rats come after the bishop and pursue him through the stanzas until:

”Down on his knees the Bishop fell,
And faster and faster his beads did he tell,
As louder and louder, drawing near,
The saw of their teeth without he could hear.

And in at the windows, and in at the door,
And through the walls by thousands they pour;
And down from the ceiling and up through the floor,
From the right and the left, from behind and before,
From within and without, from above and below, -
And all at once to the Bishop they go.

They have whetted their teeth against the stones,
And now they pick the Bishop's bones;
They gnawed the flesh from every limb,
For they were sent to do judgment on him!”[16]

One could only hope that our Bubbles would never participate in plague or vengeance. But we’re in the third part of our rat age and the charms of Bubbles were fading to the younger generation. Food deliveries became less timely and reminders to clean the cloaca went unheeded. Agreement was reached that Bubbles was to move to my office and end her days as a corporate rat.

The 20 gallon acquarium rested securely on top of the office safe and provided Bubbles with a commanding view of my office and me of her. We shared treats and I let her have the run of my desk where she provided welcome diversion during long conference calls about matters long since forgotten.

When her time came during the early spring she passed peacefully into the next world and left me with a feeling of real emptiness. Her burial matched that of Paws in opulence and was supplemented with a single buring candle to mark the gravesite. This small candle burned for nearly six hours, in its small way, a miracle and a fitting end to this tale.

There’s no denying the deeds and misdeeds of man and rat. But neither is cursed or depraved. Indeed I feel that they are a transcending mirror of each other giving lie to Shakespeare’s assertion that:

“The evil that men do lives after them,

The good is oft interred with their bones:”[17]

This was no truer of Caesar than it is of Paws, Venus or Bubbles.

Endnotes