Rats are the deadliest creatures on earth. Back in the 14th century, the lice that caused the Black Death rode into Europe on a herd of black rats. The insects sucked up the plague virus from the rodents’ blood, then passed it on to the human race. Within four years one out of every three Europeans was dead, a decimation far worse than the continent suffered in World War II.
Rats live wherever people live, sustaining themselves on the leavings of civilization. They will eat eggs, vegetables, carrion, leather, and dog feces. They’ll eat each other if they get hungry enough. They breed with a passion that makes rabbits look prudish. The average female goes into heat at the age of 75 days and will mate with 20 males a day. A day after she throws a litter–and that can be 20 pups or more–she’s back in heat. If all the offspring of a single pair survived, there would be 15,000 by the end of a year. Rats are so adaptable, so prolific, it’s assumed that they, along with roaches, will be the big winners if there’s ever a nuclear holocaust.
Kimaco Rocquemore, who lives in the 4300 block of West Crystal, claims the rats there made a gruesome show of strength.
In the Middle Ages farmers believed that piles of grain literally bred mice. Today the pest control establishment holds almost the same opinion about garbage and rats. Here’s a quote from a brochure that was part of the “rat pack” left on every neighborhood resident’s door that morning: “Getting rid of rats is simple: deny them a regular source of safe food….It is essential to keep garbage in secure containers.”
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Glanton also asks neighbors to rat on their rats.
When he’s done, someone will post one of the yellow TARGET: RATS posters you see stapled to telephone poles in every alley in the city. And over the next few weeks Glanton and the other rat baiters will return to the neighborhood to rebait holes and poison burrows they missed the first time.
