Oh Rats!
Welcome to my random musings about the world, on a weekly-to-occasional basis.
Where we are: We’re in Yogyakarta, Indonesia—home of the world’s largest Buddhist temple (8th century), and the world’s tallest Hindu temple (10th century). Both predate the invention of air-conditioning, in case you’re wondering.
Oh Rats!
Why do we never talk about rats?
Once, when I was visiting Manhattan, I was sitting on a bench near the Battery, and a rat moseyed past, about four feet away. It was New York; I wasn’t overly surprised. Big cities have rats.
But we’re all sort of horrified when we see them. I don’t like them or anything, but I just can’t pretend to be surprised when I see them.
The first time we were in Bali, six or seven years ago, we stayed in a tiny little family-run-and-owned hotel, in a little village outside of Ubud (the village made famous by Eat Pray Love). Most of Balinese life takes place outside, so breakfast was on a covered patio. Every morning, the server would arrange a small offering (usually a few grains of cooked rice and a small piece of fruit) on a foil dish, place it on a cross beam, and say a prayer.
Every morning, at about nine o’clock, a large rat would come running along the beam, eat the food from the offering, and knock the foil dish onto the floor below. Every morning, for twenty-eight days, like clockwork. We began to watch fondly for ‘our’ rat.
That wasn’t the only one we’ve encountered, though, not by a long shot. Just the other day, I watched one run along a ledge, above Lee’s head. It didn’t even warrant mentioning at the time. The German man standing next to me tried to take a picture of it, but he was too slow. Rodents can be speedy.
I generally only pay attention to them if I think they might get too close to me. That’s how I came up with one of my most important life rules: never walk between the garbage and the wall. You don’t want to startle a rat into jumping over your feet, or at least I don’t. When that happens, I’m not going to be able to ignore it.
One evening, looking for a table on a restaurant’s dim outdoor patio, Lee said we could just sit over in the corner. I said no, we were going to take the weird, awkward table smack in the middle of the patio, the one that was directly in the flow of traffic. I rarely insist on much, but that time I did. I’d seen a rat under the table in the corner.
Here’s the thing about rats: they’re always around, even if you don’t see them. You just hope the one you see crawling along an overhead wire in the restaurant doesn’t fall onto your plate—or your lap.
The very first rat I ever saw? That one was in Cary, about half a mile from my house, just sauntering across the road. I continued along on my morning jog.
When I showed Lee this essay, he thought it was a little boring, but he also thinks rats are, in general, a little boring. He saw one a couple of days ago that got his attention though, and said I could share. He was walking down a very narrow alley, and noticed two cats sitting very still, both watching a rat on the other side of the alley. It was large, but scrawny and mangy, and surrounded by flies, still alive, but clearly very ill. He said it looked like a near-death vector of black plague.
There are always rats, even if nobody ever talks about them.
Take care,
Lisa
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