In Defense of the Rats

What does the word "rat" bring to mind? Foot-long, plague-infested beasts with jaws slippery with blood? Mangled black fur and worm-like tails?

How about this:

Not what you were expecting, right?

Ever since the fallacy that is the Black Plague, society has constantly pounded a very biased idea into our primative heads: Rats bad. We've been told that they're rodents and thus live in garbage, eat human babies, and carry fleas the size of Great Danes.

Rats are unconventional, rats are vermin that do not follow the law, in any animated movie about mice, rats are the bad guys!

As a piece of unconventional vermin myself, over time I've taken a liking to rats. I mean, when I was a kid and society's words were still fresh in my mind, I wasn't quite so keen on the idea of rodents. All tail-y and stuff. But they grew on me.

Long string of tangents coming up, I think. But anyway, my own personal experiences with rats. Nimh, pictured above, is a five-month-old blonde purebreed dumbo rat. I got her after months of clandestine pleading, and finally achieved Rat Domination in my household. So many people believe that hamsters, gerbils, or even rabbits make better rodential (I made that up) pets than rats do because they "don't bite, aren't messy, and are very social."

Bullshit. Ever been scratched by a pet rabbit because you tried to hold it? I still have scars. But I've known my rats to lick my fingers and click their teeth to say hello. No violence involved.

Okay, so I suck at being persuasive. But just to leave you with a thought: Sometimes stereotyping isn't always true, for both animals and people. Be open-minded and don't close off to new ideas. Poorly written rant over. Now look at that face!

Note: Do not let your rat run pell-mell all over your bed while you try to take pictures of her. She will pee on your keyboard and you will not realize it until you start typing.