Rattus rattus

R. rattus is the scientific name for the black rat. I find humor in that. The rats in my home are probably R. norvegicus, the brown rat, a great swimmer above and below water but a lousy climber. There are allot of rats in my home these days, I think more now then ever before. I had been avoiding these thoughts, the inconvenient awareness of rats all around me, and therefore acknowledgement of the cleaning and social coordination necessary to starve them out. I would have continued on with my school prep, business planning, and home reclamation, but the fridgerator wouldn't work. This typically happens when it rains and the wires get wet and short out, the fridge is outside. Nothing happened when I hit the reset button on the GFCI outlet (ground fault circuit interrupt= electrocution interrupter) so I investigated the back of the fridgerator, it took a while to notice the colorful chips of plastic scattered about. The rats had been chewing the electric cords inside the fridgerator, Augh!! Bane of collective existence, testimony to why its not OK to leave your home a mess, the rats had struck again. It had been years since the rats had caused damage, I had almost forgotten about them. They would chew up the phone cords in the walls. Endless hassle repairing what they would soon destroy. The reason perhaps they had not cut a phone cord in a while was that I had not reinstalled the living room phone line cut some 10+ months ago. They were probably still chewing up those phone lines but as I wasn't repairing them I didn't notice.
They've destroyed the fridgerator, its gone too far. I pace around. Must do something, it's gone too far. The only other people home are two roommates who have been dating for a while and just recently started to argue. aggh better leave them to their intense discussion. I start to clean under the fridge and around it. The fridge sits on the edge of the back porch, under it a rat mulch has been growing, chewed up wrappers, nails sticks stones and lots of rat poo. I hose it out, I try to hose it out but the smell is deep within. It smells wet like a dog, and greasy pee, like a dirty ol' dog wet with rat piss. I cringe wondering how it got this far. Medieval Europe comes to mind, rats make me think of the medieval. How can people live like this, with the smell of rat pee.
Rats pee every where they go, like ants, they mark their trails. This allows a group intelligence. It marks a safe space for rats, Rat Haven. Its this smell that tells me how bad it is. When I think on rats, I think of all the futile attempts I've made at shooting with pellet guns, snapping with traps, maiming with glue. I have never poisoned them. A poisoned rat kills your or neighbors cat, even kills owls, this unacceptable. Even worse they die in your walls and reek and fester with flies, and reek for a very long time. I have never poisoned rats, but I have smelled them in others walls, it takes a long time for a festering carcass to dry out and stop smelling so much. Killing rats doesn't stop them, it just makes life a lil' better. It teaches them to be less bold, to dissa pear when they hear you comming.
The killing of rats is unpleasant, I cant keep it up. Today I killed two. Rats are too fast, you dont get a glory hunt, there is no honor, you shoot them when they trapped in a whole, when they think they're hidden. When their running, I shoot and always miss, ten shots in a row. Then when they think their hidden, in a whole in the wall or under a box of tea in a milk crate, they dont move. Then I have time to aim, and click the trigger, oops the saftey, click, oops the co2 cartidge, I run to get one, the rat is still there hiding, it young grey furry bum sticking out from under the tea boxes, I aim and shoot. It twiches, curling around in the crate, I aim and shoot again, this time in the head, it quivers for a while. These rats would have gotten away but the door was closed, and they couldn't get out. They kept scampering over to the door, trying to crawl up it then running back to the crates. Theres on more rat, I see him hiding on top of his dead sibling. I ran out of b-b's on the first one so I grab a kitchen knife, it takes a minute to pick one with a good point, and not the best carbon steel blade but a sharp stainless steel cheapo. Still hiding in the crate I stab and miss then stab again. It sinks threw the rat off center. I push the blade into a box in the crate and stand back, my mind spinning with imagery, I dont know what to do. The rat squeels in pain, it crawls up the blade, squeals and collapses, then tries to run again. Enough, to the knives again, this time a butchers knife and cutting board. I pull the knife out wwith the rat on it. It moves trying to escape, intestines falling out. I deftly hold the knife at an angle so he dosn't slip off, place it on the cutting board, and whack. It trembles spine crushed, probably already dead but it keeps shaking, I cut its head off. Silence. Bloody nasty silence, full of fresh images.
I don't really blame them for eating whats left out, I blame myself for leaving the house a wreck, or in this case, for putting up with people that leave the house a wreck. The only thing that stops them is eliminating their food source. The deep smell of pee says its already worse then that, it wafts out from a giant gaping cave, leading to an under world, it glows.
Rats live in colonies of up to 60, they'll forage for food and water more then a hundred yards away. They feed on shoots and leaves, sprouting plants, Ivy roots. They are resourceful
creatures, their is plentiful fresh water in the back yard creek. I will drive the food out, the endless grime and mess that feeds them, but that wont be enough. They have made a home here, Rat Haven, and will travel far to gather food. Rat Haven's probably a like a colony, maybe even a few. You can almost see it in the texture of the smell of the pee .
We will trap, starve, seal and hunt them out. Our friend hearing of our hardship, has shared a great wisdom with us, this very day, The bucket trap. You fill a bucket half to a third ful o water, enough to drown a rat. Then you lure them with peanut butter smeared around the inner rim. The bucket trap doesn't stop working, the squeal of drowning rats lures them in. Starve. Simple enough, it takes diligence: no food left out, no grain stored in soft containers, the bread crumbs swept away. Sealed the out. All rat holes dug under, packed with broken glass, nailed shut and screen over. We will establish predators to hunt them: gopher snakes and a hunting cat. I have a fishing license and with that I can catch 4 gopher snakes a year. Gopher are small, but the snake will slither into the nest and feed on the young. And the cat, we will raise on live mice, it important that they learn to kill young. Boa constrictor snakes cared for by naive keepers have been slain by rats, or so I've been told. If a snake was not raised on live rats, it wont recognize them as food, but a hungry rat.. the snake probably starved to death and the rat fed on its rotting carcass.
Rats arn't ogre slayers, They're ninjas climbing walls, stealing baby chicks and ducklings, they drag them to their nests. Monsters, fearsome, families, they send the males out to do most of the scavenging. Whenever I go on a rat trapping/killing spree the first few nights its the older and teenage males, the next few nights it young males and pre teen daughters, then hungry moms, sometimes pregnant, then the lost scared starving juvenilles. It feals horrible. They're tight knit ninja families sticking together, my friend pulled a nest apart and found them sprouting beans and seeds. Raw vegan ninjas. Its how pre-historic man softened grains and beans for eating, by sprouting, and probably how they discovered beer so early in human history. The rats followed civilization out of the orient, through Rome, westward europe 6th century, to england around 1700's, and everywhere western civilization could bring them. They may be as old as civilization.

Metacognition refers to thinking about cognition (memory, perception, calculation, association, etc.) itself or to think/reason about one's own thinking. The ability to consciously think about thinking is unique to sapient species and indeed is one of the definitions of sapience. ie Homo sapien sapien. Sapient is not to be confused with sentient, sentient means to feal, sapience means to know.

rats also demonstrate metacognition http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18108859/site/newsweek