Did anyone watch the season finale with all the rats? Holy cow was that ever a lot of rats. I can’t believe they were ripping out the walls and stuff to get them out. How’s that guy ever gonna pay for the repairs to his house? Yikes!
The episode (was it the one right before that one?) with the lady who had 10 years worth of bags of poo and a dining room table 3 feet deep in cat turds was just as disturbing.
I sort of wonder why all the houses don’t have rats. I think even the so-called “clean” hoarders still have vermin.
I’m kind of glad I missed that.
I do find I feel more bad for the people that have had traumatic events in their life, though. The poor man was like a child in many ways. He lost his wife at age 38(suddenly, heart attack) and has never been able to process his grief. He attached to the rats in the same way he attached to her, so I get his suffering.
I like that he totally did not look like someone who would be an emotional crier, either. I think he wore those dark glasses to try to hide his tearing-up, but he coudn’t.
I have to give “Tonya Harding” psychologist(the lady…that’s what we call her) credit. She handled him very, very well and was sympathetic.
Everyone was extremely sensitive on that episode. Nobody suggested that he was a freak for loving his rats or anything. And he’s right–rats do make good pets. Just not 2,500 of them!
My experience as an anxiety support group leader has made it clear to me that the line between supporting people with emotional issues and enabling them is razor thin, and can be extremely hard to walk.
I felt bad for the rat man.
I felt bad for him as well, and in fact on a pet rat owners forum I read people got his contact information and are sending him care packages and home depot cards. The rat rescue he worked with said he has been real cooperative and is doing well. He was just such a sweet natured man, and it was nice to (for once!) see someone who wanted to get better and was trying hard. I hope things go better for him from now on.
I didn’t see the rat episode. Was it in San Jose, California? We recently had an instance of rat hoarding here, and the adoptable rats are housed at a pet store just two doors from where I work. I heard there were thousands in the house.
I’m watching episode right now. Lisa’s funny. When her dad went into the house she was all, “Ugh, I’m never going to hear the end of it!”
And I loved her, “he’s always trying to control me.”
Bitch, if he was actually controlling you you’d be a lot better off.
Ben, the two of us need look no mooooooore . . .
I liked the rat guy, I felt bad for him. He seemed like a nice person who just got in over his head with the rats and who truly appreciated all the help he was getting. Was that also the one with the woman who flipped out and kicked the show out of her house? God she was an ungrateful bitch. I hate it when these people cry and cry about how they ‘hate to live like this and they know they have a problem, they just need some help and why oh why do I have to live like this? Why can’t it be clean!?’ and then when someone actually tries to help them they become selfish brats. “I didn’t know you were going to clean, I thought you were just going to clean!” :rolleyes:
Oh, but the worst one was that horrid woman a few weeks ago who lived in a trailer and had hundreds of abused animals. God she was sickening.
My eyes rolled so far back in my had that I thought they would get stuck permanently when she said she thought keeping her house in that condition was a way of getting back at her father. You showed him who’s boss Lisa! :rolleyes:
I actually felt sorry for the chicken that died in the rescue lady’s arms…and I eat chickens! That whole family was messed up.
The worst was the guy with all the rabbits, and his spineless wife/girlfriend. He clearly had some kind of mental disorder, but he was infuriating. I can’t believe the owners of the house didn’t start the eviction process immediately.
I own two pet rabbits. I saw “rabbits” in the show description and deleted the episode immediately.
Rats are awesome too, so I didn’t watch it either, but it sounds like a touching episode and I’m glad the ratties are getting adopted out.
I think his mental problem is that he is a whining, immature, jerk. I hated that guy and want his wife to leave him.
These all came from a few escaped pets; they weren’t nasty-ass sewer rats. They were kind of overwhelming in such large swarms, but individually they were still cute. The show had an infrared fiber-optic camera that went into the wall, and they’d poke their little noses up to it. The sound of a thousand rats chewing on the corn he laid down was a sort of pleasant susurrus, like a sleep-soother sound, if you didn’t think too carefully about what was making the noise.
I couldn’t help but laugh at the fact that he started sleeping in the outbuilding, because if he slept in the house, his rats would run across him at night and stick their whiskers in his ears.
Okay, I just got back from visiting with all the rats. I went thinking, “I hope there are a few rats left so I can see them.”
There must be a thousand rats there, all sorted as to gender and age.
Someone donated an assload of nice new rat cages to Andy’s Pet Shop, and the place is rustling, squeaking, and “crunching” (nibbling noises) with rats. I spoke to the owner, and she said they had adopted out five hundred so far.
They were all pretty cute - there were lots of young, half-grown ones. It’s funny how smart they are. Some couldn’t have been older than about three months, but they knew all about what a food dish sounded like. A worker was filling dishes with rat chow, and a short distance away, an entire cageful of youngsters were all standing on their hind legs and putting their little pink hands on the bars and watching her. Pretty good cognitive faculties for a critter with a brain about the size of a peanut.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen this show (I love to put it on when I’m doing housework…man this place is getting messy. The irony) - have they ever done followup episodes with the hoarders? This isn’t a problem which you can just dust aside over a weekend with a garbage crew, and I would imagine that unless they get continuous help, a year later they could just come back in and film a regular episode with them again.