‘The rat has almost completed its methodical colonisation of the world,’ the Observer declared on 7 March 1976. Furry pioneers had conquered everywhere from Pacific paradises to Alaskan rubbish dumps, but the world wasn’t entirely cool with it. Talking about rats, according to the writer, provoked ‘a reaction, usually a distinct pause, the sort that used to occur if you introduced sex into polite conversation’. Rats arouse ‘a silty cloud of memories and phobias’: sinister experiments, sinking ships and plague.
There was grudging respect from a ratcatcher who described them as ‘artists at survival’ and an environmental health officer who wondered ‘if one day we might find them in our rooms, sitting by the fire like other domestic animals’. In Surbiton, Geoffrey Izzard had a houseful of beloved, hand-fed pet rats: ‘He speaks to them gently and praises their virtues… he trusts them.’ At a rat show in Richmond-upon-Thames (‘like watching Miss World’), we learn ‘a prize rat should have a nice streamlined figure, a tail without kinks and an even disposition’.
But pest control was the main event. In a hard-to-find government facility, a rat éminence grise known as ‘D’ (real name withheld) was ‘at the receiving end of all the rat intelligence of the world’, his office papered with maps whose inked lines and pins showed the advancing rat front. Infinitely adaptable and alarmingly speedy to reproduce (‘In theory one pair of rats could produce 350m in three years’), were they also clever? ‘They have the ability to learn to avoid those things they discover to be distasteful,’ D explained.
Folkestone wasn’t distasteful enough, apparently – an experimental attempt to eradicate them from the town had failed. Town rats and country rats, seaside rats and migratory rats – was there anywhere they couldn’t reach? Not according to the writer. ‘If we do colonise the universe, a few rats will probably come along… to remind us of home.’
