WILD rats have never had a good press. Disease-ridden pests and spoilers of human and animal food, they can create a feeling of revulsion in a large proportion of the population. No wonder, perhaps, that George Orwell used rats as the ultimate method of torture in his book 1984.
I have to admit to having had a certain fascination with wild rats ever since my childhood. British wild mammals are not often seen but rats were one of the common inhabitants of the local pig farm where I used to rent a field to keep my horse.
Whilst many of my contemporaries spent their time listening to music or attending what were then called “pop” concerts, I was hunting rats with my ferrets and a stick amongst the swill bins and rubbish left around the pig houses. Ah, the misspent days of youth.
Sure it probably wasn’t very PC for a budding vet to be bolting rats with ferrets and trying to hit them over the head with a stick but I have to admit to it being great fun at the time. My parents for their part were untutored in the risks of Weil’s disease and just seemed grateful that I wasn’t hanging around on street corners. For that, amongst many other things, I am extremely grateful to them.
Just a few weeks ago I was staying in quite an upmarket hotel apartment on the Island of Corfu. It was set in a couple of acres of semi-tropical gardens with exotic flowering plants and butterflies and surrounded by a high “hedge” of 30 or 40 foot high Cypress trees.
I was sitting on the first floor balcony one evening with an ice-cold beer in hand just as dusk was falling. A movement in the trees level with and just 10 feet from the balcony caught my eye. I looked closely and could have sworn it was a rat. But it was 15 feet off the ground and moving through the outer branches almost like a squirrel. I went closer and, sure enough, it was not just one rat but three of them, perfectly at home and minding their own business as they foraged for their supper.
But there was something about them not quite the same as those rats that I remembered from my pig farm days (and that I’ve seen many times since). These rats were decidedly finer-boned, sleeker furred, brighter-eyed and definitely more aristocratic looking. And they were climbing through the trees like squirrels.
Now my daughter didn’t share my fascination with our furry neighbours and took quite a bit of persuading that, judging by their behaviour and the undoubted cleanliness of our apartment, they were unlikely to pay us an even closer visit during the late night hours of early morning.
I did though wonder if the hotel owners knew anything about their existence but concluded that you would have to be blind not to notice them. After all, I had only been there two days and already I’d seen three. In my experience it’s not easy to ask the question, “Did you know you have rats in the grounds of your hotel?” in a way that won’t sound like a complaint or cause offence.
Tolerated
Fortunately, though, there was a young English girl whose mum worked at the hotel and who my kids became friendly with and they brought up the subject with her. She explained that these were “tree” rats that never seemed to come into the houses and were thus tolerated as a natural part of the area’s fauna.
I saw them again the next night and slowly, slowly the penny dropped. These weren’t brown rats (Rattus norvegicus). No, these were their cousins, black rats (Rattus rattus), now very rare in Britain but obviously not so in Corfu.
Black rats were the carriers of the black death or bubonic plague throughout the Middle Ages and were the rat species to be found in Britain right up to the 17th century until the brown rat came along in the trading ships that came to our shores.
The brown rat quickly became the dominant species and until my visit to Corfu I’ve never knowingly seen a black rat. What I found most fascinating was that these rats in Corfu were living in close proximity to humans and were tolerated because they were not perceived to be a nuisance or threat. Seeing them certainly gave me a great deal of pleasure and even my daughter very quickly gave up worrying about them!
PS. We also saw an edible dormouse in the hotel grounds, the second “first” wild sighting of a species for me.
