Rats!
Wed., July 26, 04:07 PM
Not a comment, mind you. I’m really talking about rats. This story doesn’t have an end, because I’ve lost touch with the woman who told us about her son. We took a class together more than ten years ago, but went our separate ways afterwards.
The young man raised snakes and, to feed them, he also raised hamsters. One day, however, he had no hamsters of the size required for some small snakes and purchased some “pinkies” (newborn rats) for the emergency. After he fed his young snakes, he had one pinky left over. He just put it in the cage with the hamsters.
Hamsters and rats have very different habits. Hamsters maintain very tidy living space, keeping food in one place and droppings in another. They clean their cages regularly. Rats, on the other hand, are slobs. But this baby rat, having had no other examples, learned neat habits from the hamsters. He cleaned house too and, in doing so, he saved himself from ever being snake food. He had turned into an experiment: nature or nurture?
First, the rat was moved into a cage of his own. He remained true to his teachers and kept his cage neat. So the boy bought a female rat and added her to the cage. She was a typical rat, a slob, dropping bits of food all over, doing her business wherever she happened to be. The male followed her all over, cleaning up after her. He just about wore himself out, just running around after her, but eventually, he trained her. She learned to use specific areas, just as he did, and became just as good a housekeeper as the male.
Obviously, the next step would be to allow them to breed and see whether their babies would grow up to be neatniks too. Could the baby rats be trained, or would they be natural slobs? Remember, the parents would probably be outnumbered. I've often wondered whether the male rat just died of premature exhaustion after chasing his mate.
But I have no contact with the boy, and I shall never know.
The reason I always remembered this story is that I seem to have produced a hamster in a house of, not exactly rats, but… careless people? I figure it’s because Son, who didn’t have to share a room, always had control of his own space. We all seem to be more or less compulsive, but in him it turned to neatness. It’s not a bad thing; whenever I feel overwhelmed by Husband and U.D. and their habits, I’m consoled by the thought that something good came out of it all.
Last month, when we had dinner with Son and Miss P., I watched her wiping up the kitchen afterwards. Miss P. cleans the way Son does, and I couldn’t help wondering, was she always that way, or did he teach her? Frankly, my guess is that she always was, and that was part of her attraction. And part of his compulsion.
Believe me, they are a really cute couple, as well as what I call well-balanced. Mother is trying not to stick her two cents’ worth in.
I heard a quote this week that is so profound that it transcends the context in which it was originally spoken: “The fighting will stop when they decide they love their children more than they hate ours.”
The sad corollary is that men would rather forbid all forms of birth control, lest they run out of children to sacrifice.
