Rat rights

As in human rights, do rats have rights… just to live? It may seem silly, but some Buddhists even feel it repugnant to kill those blood-sucking disease-spreading mosquitoes!

I have had incessant problems with rats. Their favourite hideouts are the two Sunbeam Alpines which have been off the road for many years. They treat the two cars as their nests and leave a heavy stench of urine and excreta, together with leftovers of their meals like bones, mango stones, palm fruit sans skins and so on.

I have tried using rat poison, with some success. But there is the problem of putting up with a day or two of stench of dead rat somewhere before it was found. Most of the time, it is hidden somewhere and it requires the efficient smell sense of the housefly to locate it. Then I have the unpleasant task of taking the smelly corpse for burial. I was the unofficial hunter, killer and undertaker!

Recently, my wife bought a tin of glue specially for trapping rats. I put off using it for a few weeks because it was messy to apply. She had enough of the rats because her new Xtrail’s air-conditioning system failed because it was clogged with palm fruits! The car had to be left overnight at the service center because it required dismantling the dashboard. It was costly because of the time-consuming work and the addition of an extra filter to trap any of such rubbish before it gets into the system.

I applied the glue on to a chipboard leaving the centre for bait. I knew the rats like my fish food. It was really effective, as the next morning, I found a huge rat stuck to the board. Though expected, it is still awful to think of a rat still alive stuck to it. To avoid the unpleasant task of killing it by force, I left it for a few hours. By the time I dug a hole in the ground outside the compound, the rat was still alive! Well, I took the board with the rat stuck on it, and literally buried it alive. Do I have a choice? I have seen rats caught in a cage being left to die under the hot sun. I don’t really know what is the most humane way to rid of such pests.

My really old BMW was not spared. Even though I use it on alternate days for going out with fellow retirees for breakfast, its air filter was chock-a-block with palm fruit pieces! It was a wonder the car could start!

I was conned by a Sunday market trader into buying 3 packets of coloured powder. In retrospect, it was such an easy con-trick. On the packet, it was printed Rm10 and it was being sold at 3 for Rm10. The chap promised rats, lizards and insects will be so repelled by the powder that they won't be back for up to 6 months! It seems to be effective for up to 20 feet in all directions. The best selling point was that we do not have to put up with dead rats as in the use of poison, or having to kill trapped rats. Well, when I tried on the lizards, they were clucking away as if thumbing their noses at me!

Well, education is a life long process. Maybe I should go back to TAR College!