The Birmingham age-herald., 1904-07-10
THE MYTH OF RATS.


1 at in the sneering masculine way. monster which bolts half pound of ba- l con has passed the limits of insignificance and if a woman's cheek blanches at the horrid sight-well, she has cause, which not the most unfeeling of masculines will deny her. There is really a good deal to be said for the notion that the mod ern rat is the result of a series of con sistent efforts on the part of generations of women to imagine a mouse commen- , surate with and worthy of their fears As matter of fact, if there is such thing as a rat, it must be the most timid of brutes. We know Chuchundra, the muskrat of the Jungle Book, always try ing to make up his mind to run into the middle of the room, but never getting there. If a rat would only come out into the open and attack a horse, or devour caretaker, or make some other striking manifestation of it's existence, the case would be on different footing. But instead it turks, and peeps, and skullzs, just like the mousse It is prac- tcally invisible. It is true that there is profession of ratcatchers, but not so many centuries ago there was also a pro- fession of witchcatchers. Is it in human nature that one should expose the inner hypocrises of ones own calling? If man or mans dog catches mice, and he is paid extra for calling them rats, why should he complain? 1t is easy to imagine a confederacy of tradesmen, bound by oath to maintain superstition in the interests of better wages and higher professional status.
 No doubt history tells of rat plaques. But history tells also of dragons and sea serpents and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders. Does any one believe the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin? Of course not The piper was a myth; the children were a myth, the Aldermen were a myth Why should we believe the rats alone to be real? It is said again, that rats leave sinking ship. The proverb carries it's own refutation. If rats leave a sinking ship, where do they go to? In nine cases out of ten. the only possible alternative is a watery grave. We are seriously asked, in the case of what is represented to us one of the lowest forms of vertebrate ani- mals. to believe that it is devoid of the elementary instinct on which the whole course of evolution depends-the instinct of self preservation. Mice, apparently. are self preserving; rats are not Is not the thing a contradiction in terms? Again. if rats do leave a sinking ship, it can only be by virtue of some unrathomable. some supernatural faculty of provision. That is such an attribute as would very fitly be looked for in a mythical creature but hardly in an unclean denizen of twen- tieth century cellar. Both m It's exagger- ated claims and it's obvious fallacies, the theory of the rat betrays it's imaginative origin.
 It is a little odd to find confirmation of this subversive hypothesis in the English language itself. Tell small boy or a low-class apprentice something paIpably untrue or incredible. His reply will be the one word, .Ratsr' Why "Ratsw rather than mice or monkeys? Plainly because the rat itself is a symbol of credulous- ness. "You''-so runs the meaning of the eipses-"may be foolish enough to be- lieve this or that; for mel would as soon believe in rats.' No other satisfactory explanation of the strange interjection seems to offer itself It is an unconscious confession, enshrined in the body of the language, that the existence of the rat is fact so inadequately established that even the man in the street laughs at the notion.