Fascinating natural history treating the rat as an animal, like any other. The author camps out at an alley in NYC and watches rats. He uses his observations as a jumping off point for observations on the plague, the resiliency of rats, etc. 9.11.2001 occurs while his in the midst of his research, and that adds poignancy as well. Thoroughly enjoyable. ( )

I really enjoyed this book, although it didn't give me much insight into rats themselves as much as the human-rat balance. But i did end up with renewed respect for those furry fiends and their ability to keep on keeping on no matter how hard we try to send them to oblivion. ( )

This book sorely lacked any type of visual aid such as a map of New York or photographs of newspapers or even the rats themselves. Besides that, it was an interesting idea which showed how much history can be tied into one little alley. ( )

Richie's Picks: RATS: OBSERVATIONS ON THE HISTORY & HABITAT OF THE CITY'S MOST UNWANTED INHABITANTS by Robert Sullivan, Bloomsbury, April 2004, ISBN 1-58234-385-3

" 'The goose did what?' asked Mrs. Arable, gazing at her daughter with a queer, worried look.
" 'Told Templeton she didn't want the egg any more,' repeated Fern.
" 'Who is Templeton?' asked Mrs. Arable.
" 'He's the rat,' replied Fern. 'None of us like him much.' "
--CHARLOTTE'S WEB by E.B. White

The first time I discovered the pleasure of sharing saliva with a girl, we were by ourselves inside the shed in my family's suburban back yard. That shed had originally been built as a chicken coop for the bunch I'd incubated, candled, and hatched out as a Scouting project. The chickens had been evicted a couple of years earlier, after one of their nocturnal escapes had occasioned a predawn Sunday morning telephone call to Mom and Dad from an irate neighbor--a disabled W.W.II vet who owned the local (believe-it-or-not) Chicken Delight--upon whose front lawn our rooster was announcing the upcoming solar event.

During those years we raised chickens in Commack, I never observed a rat in the neighborhood, no less in my chicken coop. This, despite my using the chickens to compost our food scraps as well as boxes of rotting vegetables I'd be given by the kindly proprietor of the local farm stand who suddenly became the new owner of my wayward chickens, thanks to that telephone call.

" 'AAAAAAAAAH, A RAT! OH MY GOD! DIOS MIO! There's a rat in the bed!'
"I'd just fallen asleep when I heard Mami screaming. I jumped up, grabbed the staple gun and a paint roller, and ran to her.
" 'Iris, stay back!' Freddy stood in the doorway to the living room with his baseball bat. Mami was hopping around like the floor was on fire. 'It's okay, Ma! Calm down! Relax!' He rushed in and poked the bat into the corners of the pullout sofa. 'Which way'd he go?'
" 'I don't know!' Mami climbed up on a chair. 'All I know, he was huge! He was making the whole bed shake, he was so big.' "
--JUST ASK IRIS by Lucy Frank

Back in 1986, when I purchased my farm here in Sebastopol, I inherited dozens and dozens of "wild" chickens. Unpenned and multiplying fruitfully, they roosted in the eves of the barn, in the tangled wisteria bushes out front, and on top of my old blue Datsun wagon. For months I crept out at night with a flashlight to grab them, cage them, and sell them to the local farm supply store.

I also inherited some rats. When I again kept chickens for a few years, while my children were preschoolers, the rats were constantly making off with the eggs and the chickens' feed. I've forever since needed to be diligent about keeping the goats' grain in tightly covered metal containers. My late golden retriever, Annie Banannie, used to catch and chomp the rats sometimes, but our current canines apparently aren't as talented.

" 'Las ratas, son el pan nuestro de cada dia,' the man said. 'The rats are part of everyday life.' "

I haven't observed any rats out there in a while, but I know from the evidence of chewed up stuff and the old nests I periodically discover that they are still out there. I certainly have yet to see the charm in rats.

But I've now acquired an abundance of intriguing, entertaining, and downright scary facts and anecdotes about the history, physiology, and behavior of rats, along with the history and behavior of humans in dealing with these pests. All this, thanks to reading Robert Sullivan's RATS: OBSERVATIONS ON THE HISTORY & HABITAT OF THE CITY'S MOST UNWANTED INHABITANTS.

"Rats succeed while under constant siege because they have an astounding rate of reproduction. If they are not eating, then rats are usually having sex. Most likely, if you are in New York while you are reading this sentence or even in any other major city in America, then you are in proximity of two or more rats having sex. Male and female rats may have sex twenty times a day, and a male rat will have sex with as many female rats as possible--according to one report, a dominant male rat may mate with up to twenty female rats in just six hours."

The author spent many nights over the course of a year closely observing the rat population of a particular alley in lower Manhattan. The alley was named after Medcef Eden, a prosperous Revolutionary-era friend of Aaron Burr whose descendants (Eden's descendants, that is) used to own the farm that was eventually developed into Times Square. From the continual inclusion of detailed tangential information, such as the two hundred year evolution of the cobblestoned, brick-sided, urine-reeking alley that Sullivan chose as his base for nocturnal rat-watching, it is obvious that the author spent his days locating and poring over the thousands of carefully noted references from which he has mined multitudes of fascinating facts and stories that make you constantly want to interrupt the nearest person and share what you've just read.

"One of the most amazing rat skirmishes ever happened downtown in 1979, when a woman was attacked by a large pack of rats.
"It happened on a summer night, just after nine o'clock. The woman was described by the witnesses as being in her thirties. She was on Ann Street, right near the entrance to Theater Alley. Judging from the various accounts, she seems to have been approached by the rats as she was walking toward her car. She also seems to have noticed the rats coming near her, their paws skittering on the street. Witnesses said the rats swarmed around the woman. One climbed her leg and appeared to bite her. The woman screamed. A man nearby ran to help the woman, taking off his jacket and waving it in an attempt to scare the rats away. The man told police that the rats appeared undeterred by anything he did, and in a second they began to climb up his coat. Seeing this, the man ran to a phone and called the police. By now, the woman was in a 'state of hysteria' according to another witness. She staggered to her car, which was parked a few yards away. The rats followed her. She got in, closed the door. Now the rats were climbing on her car. She was screaming when she drove away. The woman was gone by the time the police arrived, but the rats were still there, scurrying through the street and into Theater Alley and into their nests in a lot on Ann Street, just around the corner."

" That's better,' said Joan, rubbing him dry. 'Now you be a good boy and eat with the spoon.'
" 'Yes, I will,' he said, nodding.
" 'I'm surprised they didn't teach you manners when you were a page boy,' she said.
" 'I was a rat,' he said.
" 'Oh, well, rats don't have manners. Boys do,' she told him."
--I WAS A RAT! by Philip Pullman

Tales of City government and union leaders whose names I recall from my New York childhood, famous and infamous figures of NYC eras past, and nearly anonymous characters whose work has been vital to the understanding of and/or battling against these varmints are all tucked into this rat's nest of information.

"Today, [Juan] Colon is remembered as the only exterminator ever to tie a rodent to a rope and walk it back to the [NYC Rodent Control] bureau office, eager to show off its impressive size. 'I was young and crazy,' Colon once said.

No, I still don't see the charm of rats. And it won't make me sleep any better having learned such err...interesting facts such as that there are more plague-infected rodents in North America today than existed in Europe during the infamous Black Plague. But there is no question that Robert Sullivan's RATS trapped me within its cover. (And a gorgeous Peter Sis cover it is to boot!)

Richie Partington
http://richiespicks.com
BudNotBuddy@aol.com ( )

ich! interesting book with interesting diversions. lots of info on exterminators. i have an exterminator. i look at him with new eyes. ( )