I moved to downtown toronto in the fall of 2007, recently I have noticed a rat hanging right on the corner of my road (college and bathurst) Ive noticed him the past two nights, in the same spot
Tonight I think I heard a rat while i was on my front step. I am a little uneasy with a rat so close to me while i smoke. Is this fear justified at all or should I just get over it?
sneaks in, cackles, and hides under the table rubbing his paws
To be more useful though, I don’t know what a rat could do to you while you smoke. I wouldn’t hold my hand out to him or anything, but I doubt that he would be able to bite through your clothes, and especially not your shoes.
Really, you’re in about the same amount of danger as if it was a squirrel. The only difference being that we’re taught to think Squirrel = Cute! Rat = Evil! But there’s not any real difference between them in terms of attack power or likelihood to attack you or anything. And you’re not living in medieval Europe, and you probably wash every day, so the Bubonic Plague is a pretty long shot. If any wild animal bites you, clean it and call your doctor to see if you should come in to get something. Probably you’re fine to just put a bandaid on though.
Phobias are by their nature irrational, but that doesn’t mean that it is stupid or strange to have them.
That said, rats are pretty much the coolest pet ever. They’re so cute. I’m sure Sage Rat is a sexy divil too.
Can’t. Stand. rodents!!! I pit them - they are not cute, lab or wild!
And I pit mice - especially when they get in a house and chew things up and leave little droppings -
EWWWWWW!!!
But… I WUV you!
So do dogs, but they leave big droppings. And rodents wash themselves.
Rats are actually better the mice - they smell better. People like Brian Jacques perpetuate stereotypes.
Quick! someone send me a cat while I stay on the counter where it wont get me!
(damn smart asses)
Ugh! I cant even stand the sound they make when they move! That’s why I use labhumans instead.
The sound they make…? But… they don’t really make sound when they move. No more than any other moving animal, anyway…? There’s nothing uniquely “rodential” about it. Cockroaches make more noise. At least the big Florida ones do.
You’re not talking about the squeaking, are you? Because they only do that when moving around in movies.
Unless you step on one, of course. Then, yeah they squeak.
No - I mean when they are dodging under things that rustle - like boxes or papers and what not. I hate the noise they make when they are chewin/scratching in walls.
And I really hate the noise the old fashioned mouse traps make when they are set off.
double triple ewwwww!
Some odd reason, I can handle Texas “waterbugs” rather well.
Oh yeah, I grant you that sound is annoying. I have a pet mouse myself, and not too long ago a field mouse decided to move into my apartment and keep her company. So I was finding droppings up on the lid of her terrarium, next to the food hopper, etc. etc. He was apparently getting into the apartment from the attic and climbing down through the closet, so at night I’d sometimes hear him scuttling around in there. I put out a couple nonlethal traps for him, but no luck.
One night I woke up and felt him climbing around on my bare foot. That was an interesting moment. Unfortunately he was not sufficiently stunned after bouncing off the ceiling, so I wasn’t able to catch him right then.
Not too long after that I caught a glimpse of the little bugger zipping into the bathroom. “Aha!” I thought to myself. “The bathroom door is snug! I can corner him in there and give him the heave ho!” Alas, he also seemed aware that the bathroom had no other escape routes, and so tried to make a break for it at the last possible second. He only made it halfway, unfortunately. So much for my catch-and-release program.
Meanwhile, my two ferrets gave that little guy free rein of the apartment for weeks. These things wouldn’t know what to do with a rodent if you served it to them on a plate. Seriously, how do ferrets even survive in the wild? They appear to have the hunting skills of an especially clumsy potato.
I like them water bugs too. We’re talking the giant toe biters right? They’re also called ‘electric light bugs’ here in Florida. Prehistoric.
I used to keep rats when I was a kid. They’re wonderful pets. You can train them to do tricks and you don’t need to walk them.
If you’ve got a rat phobia, I recommend going down to the pet store and getting acquainted with one. They can be quite charming, really. Just as much individual personality as cats (more, in my opinion). One of mine (he was a hooded agouti) was playful, energetic and affectionate. The other one (blue) was pretty subdued, but smart as a whip.
It’s quite a shame that, as a species, they’ve caused so much trouble, because individually, they’re absolutely delightful.
Winston Smith, is that you? Just stay there, they’ll be along for you shortly, and then it’s a trip to room 101 for you.
How can you say that to such cute widdle faces?
Did anyone else notice the line in the Wikipedia article about the extinct giant capybara - eight times the size of the modern one, a rodent the size of a grizzly bear?
My cat brought in a rat once. She came through my bedroom window with a large sewer like grey rat. I was terrified and was glad my son was there. It was barely alive. We got an old towel and threw it on it and scooped it into a plastic bag and threw it in the trash outside. I can not even imagine were she found the thing.
I had an irrational fear of mice at one point.
I was feeding the dogs one day. I took his bowl and stuck it in the bag to scoop up some food but it was almost empty so I was scraping it on the bottom then I felt something scrap my hand. I dropped the bowl and pulled my hand out and on it was a little mouse that of course flew across the room. I was screaming and hopping around like I was on fire. I have never been afraid of mice but that little scraping on my hand had me almost in hysterics.
A few days later Mr. Mouse decided to come out again but the cat was ready and did some damage but he was still alive. I stood on the couch in fear waiting for my husband to get out of the shower to help me while the cat played with the mouse under the kitchen table.
My fear faded though and I am no longer afraid of them. I have not seen one in a while though.
Its fleas could jump to you and give you bubonic plague.
It could run on you- the feeling of those little feet scrabbling over you… shudder
You’re a braver man than I, percussion, just based on the fact that I didn’t hear you screaming when you saw the rat. If I saw a rat (a wild rat, pet rats just squick me out mildly), people in Australia would hear my screams.
Pets are one thing… but even so they can still be unpredictable (yes, as well as cats, dogs, etc) and remembering the incident with a schoolmate and her pet makes me shudder. My former schoolmate, let’s call her Dawn, loved her pet mice. So much so she let them run around freely out of the cage, indicating that they are “litterbox trained” (I dont know the correct terminology on this one) so she didnt worry about their messes.
She obviously didnt worry about their interaction with little children, either. You see, she was babysitting her niece and left her unattended, on the floor, with a bottle. This attracted the rat - well, the milk was an attraction anyways. So the rat went on a nibbling spree and the infant was left with some severly damanged digits and even lost a couple of fingers. Every since then, I cant help but to put just one more strike against the little buggers (the rodents, not the infants).
(yeah, I know, where was she when the child was crying - or screaming, you would think)
Anyways, the wild ones can carry diseases which is, I suppose, what really freaks me out.
If the rodent is “house friendly” and kept in a cage and I dont have to hear it or deal with it on an everyday level - fine. Just keep it away from me. The elephants have the right idea - Eek! there’s a mouse - stay away! =)
My grad school experience involved experiments with rats. We are talking about hundreds of our rats alone in a dedicated facility. Other researchers housed their rats there as well amounting to over a thousand total in one spartan but very clean room of rats. There was a full-time tech to do day to day cleaning and maintenance as well as a veterinarian that did rounds and was on call 24/7.
It couldn’t stand the little fuckers and I handled hundreds of them. I am (not) ashamed to say that anytime it came to put dozens of them down, I was the first volunteer. Decapitation with a mini guillotine was satisfying but the CO2 chamber holds a special place in my heart as well. We had a very large chest freezer where the dead little bodies were stored. It probably held about 1000 dead rats before the hazardous waste people came to pick them up. Sometimes I just opened the lid to get some satisfaction.
I am not scared rats at all but karma worries me. Little known fact: they don’t carry rabies in the wild. Little known fact #2: a simple pellet gun is your friend when it comes to this matter.
At the very least, it suggests a skewed perspective… I would think you’re in more danger from the smoking than from the rat.
Of course, the smoking itself just might anger the rat. You don’t leave the butts in the gutter, do you? Because that’s his front yard, and he might gather a few thousand of his little friends to come and have a word with you about non-edible urban litter.
That’s fairly depressing. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered an animal researcher who claimed to enjoy killing his charges.
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