JOIN USThe rat is a much maligned animal. The characteristic features of this little fellow are a never ending desire to explore and the ability to feed on anything. We on our part do everything to exterminate the rats but we never seem to succeed. We try to set rat traps and place food items smeared with rat poison in order to catch rats.
In spite of all our efforts we have not been able to get rid of the small pests. There is a story which shows us how we have failed to conquer the little fellow. A man used to place a piece of meat or fish in the trap. One evening he couldn’t find any meat or fish piece so he placed the picture of a fish. What do you think he found in the trap next morning? The picture of a rat!
Our dislike for rats has prompted us to coin idioms and proverbs which indicate unpleasant things. We say ‘smell a rat’ to indicate suspicion of treachery. The term rat race is used to indicate fiercely competitive struggle, especially in business. An unpleasant or treacherous person is idiomatically described as a rat.
There has been traditional enmity between the cat and the rat. Interestingly there are many stories based on this enmity. The most interesting and well known story being the one with the title, ‘Who will bell the cat?’ Another story is that of a holy man who kept a cat in order to get rid of rats which were troubling him during his meditation. He had to buy a cow in order to get milk for the cat and employ a woman to take care of the cow and milk her...
Why not try to have a look at the favourable things that rats do for mankind? Rats transmit diseases like typhus and plague but at the same time they are used for medical research. These poor creatures offer themselves to be experimented upon so that we may be able to find many medicines which help us to conquer disease. Remember the story of the rat and the lion?
Imagine how the little fellow was able to save the ferocious king of the forest? But that reminds us of how rats bite electric wires of our domestic electric equipment. It is a wonder of wonders that they don’t get electrocuted in the process. Could it be possible that they bite only one wire at a time carefully?
Gods and goddesses have chosen animals as their vehicles. Murugan has selected the peacock, Durga sits on the lion. Ganesha has chosen the rat as his vehicle. Is this not great honour to the humble rat? In a quiz, a question was asked, ‘Why does Ganesha sit on a rat?’ The answer is simple. ‘Otherwise the rat will run away.’ Some people wonder why Vinayaka selected the rat as his vehicle. May be to teach a lesson to us that even the smallest creature can rise to lofty heights!
Walt Disney chose Mickey Mouse to entertain us and made the lowly rat an immortal character. The modern man has selected the rat with a slightly better sounding name, namely the mouse, for driving all the computers and other sophisticated equipment and conquering the world of information technology.