It is common for people who find a fat brown rat in the basement to claim it is evil and as “big as a cat.” But rats rarely grow to weigh a full pound, and from tip to tail, an average one measures about 10 inches. And unless cornered, they are typically gentle and will avoid humans.
Although they dwell in the muckiest areas of urbania, rats are clean; they spend far more time cleaning and preening than humans do. The diseases that may be passed from rat to human are contracted by contact with concentrations of rat feces or urine or by being bitten (though, of course, the vast majority of infectious diseases contracted by humans come from contact with other humans).
In some countries, bubonic plague is still an issue, and it is passed between rats and humans by flea vectors (though not in North America). There has never been a case of a human in North America contracting rabies from a rat.
Still, they cause a lot of trouble. They chew through electrical wires and tunnel into homes and buildings. They reproduce wildly, sometimes within our walls. Rats will eat any animal smaller than they are: baby birds, small reptiles, fish, baby squirrels and rabbits.
Rats are fascinating and intelligent and make wonderful pets. They learn their names, come when called, bond readily with individual humans, play games like a dog and snuggle to sleep on laps or in pockets.
While laughter was long believed by ethologists to be a behavior limited to humans and, perhaps, the higher primates, recent studies show that young rats appear to laugh when they are tickled. They don’t emit the high laughter sounds when their backs are tickled, just when their tummies are — like human children.
And compelling new research by neuroscientists at the University of Chicago shows that rats may actually exhibit true altruism. When one rat was locked in a small Plexiglas cage within a larger cage, the rat in the big cage often worked tirelessly to release its imprisoned rat colleague, without any reward and whether or not it was acquainted with the confined rat.
When a pile of the rats’ favorite treat (milk chocolate chips!) was also placed in the larger cage, the free rat would not eat all the chips herself but would liberate the caged rat and share the chocolate. After the imprisoned rat was released, they would run around the cage together, jumping and chirping, as if rejoicing. Then, yes — to the chocolate.
The Wild Guest Book
Find out who your wild neighbors are, and learn to read their tracks, with this easy do-it-yourself project.
A tracking box can help you learn to identify tracks in your backyard. Make a wood frame out of 4‑by‑6s (tracking schools recommend a minimum of 4 feet by 8 feet) and fill it with sand. Play sand is great — it is light and lump‑free, and especially good for small birds. Construction sand or beach sand works, too. Dampen the sand so that it holds a shape without becoming runny.
Try visiting tracks as they age, as they fill with debris, as they are affected by weather. If no wild animals come, then practice with domestic ones. Try walking your dog through the box when he is hungry, when he is full, when he has to pee, when he doesn’t.
A box is best because it offers a controlled, contained substrate, but you can still benefit from the idea by leaving damp sand or soil edges around your garden. I have experimented with these loose‑form tracking boxes at the borders of our koi pond (sprinkled wildly with raccoon tracks) and our vegetable garden (mouse, squirrel, rat, opossum) and beneath our cherry tree (more of all of the above) — all of them small wild entries into the loveliest guest book I have ever kept.
Share your urban wildlife encounters via Facebook for a chance to win the book!
From the book The Urban Bestiary by Lyanda Lynn Haupt.
Copyright © 2013 by Lyanda Lynn Haupt. Reprinted by permission of Little, Brown and Company, New York. All rights reserved.
Seattle-based naturalist Lyanda Lynn Haupt is the author of Crow Planet: Essential Wisdom from the Urban Wilderness and blogs at TheTangledNest.com.