I’ve
always liked mice and rats. When I was young, I would set out traps to catch
the occasional mouse that got inside my building, but I only did it because of
all the warnings I’d heard indicting rodents as prime vectors of disease and as
prone to overpopulating whole cities. I’m sure those warnings are legitimate.
Nevertheless, every time I put down a trap, I’d root for the mouse to find a
way of avoiding or defeating the contraption.
Then
came the night that put a stop to my using that method of control forever. I
heard a trap in a corner of my kitchen snap. Afraid of what mangled little
creature I’d find – dead, or worse yet, still alive - I went to look. Sure
enough, there was a little mouse in the trap, thankfully already quite dead,
the bar of the trap heavily on its neck. But as I started to reach down to pick
up the trap for disposal, a second mouse darted out of a small gap at the door
sill. It rushed practically under my feet and nuzzled its companion. Then it
tried to leverage the trap onto its shoulders and drag it away! It tried a
variety of hunching, contorting positions in order to hoist one end of the trap
onto its back. It actually did succeed in moving the trap an inch or two
towards the safety of that escape hatch by the door. It tried to effect this
rescue for over a minute, persisting even after I stomped my foot to put an end
to its pitifully futile attempt. Finally, it too realized the futility of its
efforts, and disappeared permanently back under the door sill.
What
a display of bravery and altruism! What superior willingness to help a
companion, even in the face of danger from a monstrous creature a thousand
times its size! I thought of a date my mother told me she’d had with a wealthy
upperclassman from college. They had gone sailing on his family yacht. As my
mother looked over the railing at the bounty of the blue water skimming under
the boat – her date had cautioned her. He said, “If you fall over, I’ll throw
you a life jacket, but that’s as far as I’ll go. I won’t go in after you. If
you fall over, you’re on your own.”
Well,
I guess the man was being sensible in a way, but hardly chivalrous. How much
more gallant that little mouse had been, risking its own life so willingly for a
fellow mouse.
I’ve
read rats have been known to act the same way, especially when it comes to rescuing
individuals they can identify as mates or offspring. Plus of course there is
the high intelligence demonstrated by rats and mice, the quality that has
caused them to be impressed into service for decades in labs around the world where
they serve as stand-ins for humans in endless tests.
So
all in all, rodents can be admirable. After witnessing that especially courageous
display of first-responder effort on the part of the mouse, I never used
another snap-trap to capture one. I turned exclusively to Have-A-Hart traps.
That often made quite a chore for me. When I’d hear the Have-A-Hart trap snap in
the middle of the night, in the middle of a snowstorm – Oh No! I’d sometimes
keep the mouse in the trap until the weather let up a little, but I was
reluctant to keep it isolated and hungry in the trap for too long. (The mice
never seemed to eat further into the dollop of peanut butter or any other food
in the trap once they’d been caught. They seemed to lose all appetite with the
stress of the situation, just as humans don’t usually feel like eating anything
while waiting in the Doctor’s office.) So the capture of a mouse often meant
that I would have to go out in all kinds of inclement weather, and always in
the dead of night when I wouldn’t be seen. I’d drive the mouse to one of
several likely places I had scoped out for these occasions.
One
of my favorite depositories was an old abandoned garage in a distant
neighborhood – unconnected with any currently occupied human dwelling. The garage
was falling apart, which meant it had lots of gaps into which a mouse could
scurry. Rarely did a mouse head for any of those gaps though. When I’d open the
door of the trap, most of them would perversely head the other way, in the
direction of the highest snow drift in sight. (Maybe not so intelligent after
all?) Well, I’d done all I could. I had to have faith that the mouse would
double back and find the inviting holes in the garage once I’d left the scene.
And
so it went. I had to smile ruefully at myself for undertaking these cold winter
excursions, these sorties down dark alleys in the middle of the night. I
thought if I expanded my impulse to be helpful to rodents, that impulse perhaps
ought to take some less strenuous form. I saw there was a chapter of the “Rat
Fancier’s Society” holding meetings in my area. However, as I looked over the
membership on the Society’s Meet-Up page online, I began to have some doubts
about joining. A number of the members were clearly into the “Goth” scene and showed
themselves holding their pet rats as part of their Goth accoutrements. I didn’t
know much about Goth enthusiasms. I’d never watched Twilight or gotten a
tattoo of a skull on me anywhere. Nevertheless, I thought I’d give the club a
try. I clicked that I’d be at their next meeting, to be held at one of the few big
bricks-and-mortar bookstores that was still hanging in there in the face of
online competition.
When
I got to the bookstore the following week, I saw that a whole section of its
first floor had been turned into a sort of Parisienne café setting. All sorts
of drinks and noshes were available from the counter, and different sized
tables were deployed around the space, clearly to accommodate different-sized
groups. Apparently a lot of Meet-Ups were held here. I saw most of the tables
were occupied by different clutches of people huddled in earnest confab over
some obviously shared interest.
It
struck me then that I had a problem. I had no idea which of these groups might
be the Rat Society. Unless one of the Goth members showed up, I’d have no way
of even guessing. I had no cell phone and even if I had, I hadn’t thought to
take the number of the group’s organizer. So I went off into a corner of the
café and sat at a small table, waiting for a sign. Nothing presented itself.
Finally,
when it got to be about ten minutes past the meeting hour, I knew I would have
to take action or else risk missing the whole meeting as it took place
somewhere right in front of me. So I got up and started to circulate inquiringly.
The word “Fancier” utterly escaped me for the moment. So as I leaned down to
discreetly address what looked like an officiating member of each group in turn
- I had no choice but to use the very un-euphemistic synonym. I whispered, “Excuse
me. Are you with the Rat Lover’s Society?”
Well,
you can guess what a reaction that drew. My question triggered shock,
commiseration at having so revolting a fetish, hilarity, and recoil. Sometimes
my question elicited elaborations of the inevitable “No, we’re not!” answer.
The head of one group gasped, “Oh, no! Rats are exactly what we DON’T want to
see any of. We’re quilters. We do everything to keep rats AWAY from our work!”
This emphatic repulse started a chain of recollection in the group. Another
member recalled how she’d peered into her cedar chest where she’d stored some
of her most precious quilts – only to see that the quilts had been gnawed into
tatters, obviously by some incursion of a rodent or of rodents. Upon examining
the chest, she saw the small separation in two pieces of its wood that had
allowed the invasion. Years of work ruined!
This
tragic narrative triggered the memories of other group members as they
recounted their own frustrating battles in their war with rodents. The topic
drifted away from strict concern with quilts. Another woman at the table
recalled her shock at finding the outsized, hand-made hemp hammock she’d lugged
all the way back from Mexico – completely chewed away. Again, rodents the
obvious culprits! (Although I privately thought moths might also have been implicated
in some of these crimes.) As one-by-one, the women in this group were inspired
to tell their own war stories in the unending battle against rodents – I myself
drifted away – on to the next table.
At
this next table I approached, I triggered an even more emphatic convulsion of
disgust and autobiography. When I once again posed the question sotto voce,
“Pardon me, but are you with the Rat Lover’s Society?” – my informant emitted a
loud, bawdy guffaw. “God, NO!” she spat. “My ex was a real rat, and I can tell
you – there’s no love lost there!” Turning to what she obviously felt were
likely to be her compatriots in suffering on this score, she launched into a
description of some of her ex-husband’s unsavory sexual practices.
Having
extracted this final “No!” vote, it seemed I had polled all the possible tables
in the bookstore. I retreated to sit for a few more minutes in a corner of the
cafe, just in case an actual Rat Fancier (ah, now, too late, I remembered the
more euphemistic term) should show up. When none did, I looked around the
bookstore for a bit and then wandered back out into what was then solid night.
When
I got home, I checked the Rat Fanciers’ page and found the meeting had been
cancelled. Not having a cell phone really does put me incommunicado. But I took
the chance to look more closely at some of the pictures that members of the
Society had posted – pictures of themselves posing with their pets. One picture
in particular caught my eye. It showed the aftermath of a birthday party that
had obviously been thrown in honor of the woman’s large black “fancy rat.”
There was a slightly nibbled little birthday cake with a now-quenched single
candle stuck into it. And there was Damien, the birthday boy, lying asleep in
sated bliss on a purple velvet cushion on its owner’s lap. The rat had a tiny, pointed
wizard’s hat on, tied under its chin. You’d think a rat wouldn’t tolerate such
a thing, but it apparently had found being the object of such dolly dress-up to
be a small price to pay for the lavish lifestyle it enjoyed in return.
The
day had indeed produced something to laugh at. Whenever I think back on my hour
circulating around, unctuously asking people if they were “Rat Lovers,” I
literally LOL. But then I almost always flip moods, thinking of some of the philosophical
implications of the existence of those few, those lucky few who enjoy the
patronage of members of the Rat Fanciers’ Society. While these rats are lying
in luxurious splendor on velvet cushions – there are the vast majority of rats
in the world, being hounded, beaten, poisoned into miserable deaths at the end
of short, miserable lives. And really, there’s no appreciable difference
between the two sets of rats. The celebrated, cosseted rat did nothing to
deserve his loving treatment. By the same token, the rat who is being smashed
under the shovel of a city worker did nothing to deserve his fate.
These
considerations always lead me to recall the disparate kinds of treatment I’d
seen given to another species – to ducks. I was the guest at the home of a
pen-pal in rural Missouri for a week. The man turned out to have some decided
likes and dislikes, some aggressive intolerances. One of his most obvious “pet
peeves” was the tapping behavior of a wild duck on his acreage. The duck would
appear a few times a day and tap with its beak on the glass of the man’s French
doors. It would tap for a minute or two at a time, seeming to solicit either
just some playful human companionship, or else the more mundane necessity of
some food. Either way, I found the duck’s wistful appearance at the window to
be very appealing.
My
host took a completely different view of the duck. Every time the duck appeared
(which I did not consider to be intrusively often), the man would roil in rage,
yelling dumbfounding obscenities. Finally, on the last day of my visit, when
the duck appeared outside the windows, the man had had ENOUGH. He rushed into
his barn, grabbed a hatchet, and started to pursue the animal around his yard
in a froth of fury. I cringed at the horror show in front of me. Instead of the
Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I seemed to be threatened with witnessing the Missouri
Hatchet Massacre.
Fortunately,
the duck sensed its lack of a welcome in time and ran for cover. It tucked
itself so far under the man’s porch that there was no way the fellow would
crawl under and get it. But my host assured me that “the next time,” he’d make
sure the duck didn’t get away. I was glad I was leaving before what seemed
would be an inevitable bloody butchery.
Again,
this scene conjured in my mind the stark, unjustified contrasts in treatment
that exist in the world. Just before I’d come to this man’s house, I’d stopped
in Memphis where I’d visited the Peabody Hotel. There, sharp at 11:00, I’d been
in the crowd of tourists who come from all over the world to see the “March of
the Ducks.” Some specially favored ducks come down from their palatial roosts
on the Hotel roof, step off the elevator, and parade around the fountain in the
center of the Hotel lobby – ducks in a row. An appreciative wave of “Ooohs” and
Aaaahs” and picture-snapping runs through the crowd as these ducks strut their
stuff. When the March is over, some of the ducks waddle back in military precision
into the elevator that whisks them back up to their penthouse suites. Some stay
behind and swim in the fountain.
These
admired Peabody ducks are no better than the duck in the back yard of my
Missouri host. If anything, that wild duck seemed more personable and
intelligent than the trained ducks of Memphis. It was sheer luck that destined
one to painful extermination and another to the cheers of multitudes.
All
of which seems to me to further put the lie to the assurances of so many of
Oprah’s guests and of Oprah herself – the fatuous assurances that we can all be
anything we want to be, that we can all “become” what we dream. In the United
States and many other democratic countries, people do have a large amount of
self-determination. To a great extent, they are responsible for their own
circumstances in life. However, there is still a large measure of fate that is
beyond anyone’s control. One gets struck by lightning; one standing just six
inches away doesn’t get hit. One gets caught in the cross-fire of a gang gun
fight; one standing six inches away is safe. And so on through car accidents, the
sweep of a wave at sea, the direction in which a deadly germ wafts, etc., etc.
Most
people recognize how the luck of the draw has determined people’s fate in that
kind of split-second event. But what people less often seem to acknowledge is
how much of one’s life is determined by the attitudes of the surrounding people
in power. While a healthy white male in 1850 in Virginia might have had some
chance of realizing an aspiration to be President of the United States – a
black slave in the same neighborhood would have had no such chance. While a Jewish
man in 1940 in Los Angeles might have had a chance of realizing an aspiration
to be a movie mogul – a Jewish man in 1940 in Auschwitz would have had almost no
such chance. All of the positive-thinking guests holding forth on TV shows are
talking twaddle to people in such circumstances.
Indeed,
the “Anyone can succeed” messages of motivational speakers and life coaches can
be worse than twaddle. If their message is that anyone can realize his
or her dreams, then they must be implicitly laying blame on all the abject victims
of others’ rampant cruelty. If the Jewish man in Auschwitz didn’t realize his
dream of producing feature films – if indeed he didn’t survive through to the
end of the week – it must be his own fault, according to these motivational
gurus. The Jewish man must have failed to think positively enough. Or he must
have failed to properly attune himself to the Universal Energy Force.
Again,
in democratic societies, most people do have a lot of latitude to pursue any
dream, to bring any talent they have to fruition. However, even in the most
freedom-friendly societies, conditions can change with alarming speed. All the
myriad possibilities afforded to individuals in pockets of the society or in
the society as a whole, can be reduced to the single laser-point dreams of
dictators, or simply of people in power who have adamantine prejudices and
aversions. Evading the cruel impulses of those in authority can be impossible,
as demonstrated through the ages by the deaths of millions upon millions of
those caught in wars, holocausts, and genocides, or just in the sights of someone
for whom an individual’s life has no value.
We
are all in danger of becoming sitting ducks – or rats in a trap.
