MIXED COMPANY

By ANNE K JACQUES
Part 2.


RATTUS RATTUS AND THE JERBOA

The first few centuries of the Christian era were not happy years for man or
beast. Europe was torn by wars, religious intolerance, pestilence and famine. In
those days, armies on the march lived off the land; they swarmed like locusts
and left behind them little but filth, desolation and misery. The need for
security led to a population drift from a rural to a semi-urban way of life.
People tended to condense into hastily-built walled cities in which food could
be more safely stored, and which served as dormitories not only for the land
workers but for their flocks and herds. The farm stock was taken within the city
walls at sunset and all the narrow streets and alley ways became thronged with
cattle, sheep, goats and geese.
Wherever people go, rats go too, so they went to town and added to the
general malaise. They helped themselves to the stored grains, often spoiling as
much as they ate. When the Corn Spirit became a corn thief he lost the
friendship of man. The new towns were utterly devoid of any form of organised
sanitation and soon became hotbeds of every form of human disease, crime and
disorder. However, there were no health considerations involved in the changed
man-rat relations. Man and rat have suffered from similar diseases ever since
they gave up their nomadic way of life, and what was bad for one was generally
bad for the other.



These new cities were timber-built and it has been noted over untold
centuries that periods of excessive deforestation invariably are followed by
periods of ill-health and epidemics. By the fourth century AD these epidemics
became so frequent that they assumed an almost predictable ten-year cycle. There
were three main types of pestilence or plague – pneumonic, bubonic and
septicaemic, whilst minor ones were smallpox, syphilis and a type of influenza
later known as `English sweat'. The advent of an epidemic of plague gave rise to
strange upsurges of extreme human behaviour, such as seeing visions and doing
public penance. At such times there was often a resurgence of the ancient cult
of flagellation. In other districts people turned to hectic merrymaking,
indulging in drinking, in every form of vice and debauchery and in crazy
vandalism.
For children, there developed the merry little game of `Ring o', ring o'
roses, pocket full of posies, ascha, ascha, all fall down,' in which they
mimicked the sudden deaths of plague victims as they fell in the streets after
paroxysms of sneezing or coughing. The dead were generally left to lie where
they fell until a `death cart' came round periodically to gather them up and
carry them away to a huge common grave far away from human habitation. The
`pocket full of posies' is reference to the current belief that certain dried
herbs possessed protective properties against infection, and it became customary
to fill pockets and carry sachets of dried petals and pomanders.
The worst plague that the world has ever experienced occurred in the middle
of the fourteenth century and it was known as the `black death' because of the
black blotches which appeared on the bodies of the dying, caused by subcutaneous
haemorrhages. In Germany and France this epidemic was particularly terrible and
was called the `great dying'. It was estimated that about twenty-five million
people perished. In China the death toll was so great that work on the river
embankments was neglected, resulting in terrible floods, crop losses and fearful
widespread famine and misery. This pestilence arrived in England in the year
1345, and London lost two-thirds of its inhabitants. This terrible pandemic
originated in an area around the head of the Caspian Sea. In `The Outline of
History', H.G. Wells stated that the black death was the human form of a disease
endemic amongst jerboas and other small rodents in the region. Their migration
was caused by natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods, resulting in
food shortages.
The jerboa is a dainty little creature found in most desert or semi-desert
lands such as Arabia and North Africa. They are rather like miniature kangaroos,
and progress by leaps and bounds on thin hind legs, using the tail to steer and
balance themselves. They have large eyes and a silky fawn coat which blends well
with their natural habitat, but they found little suitable terrain in Europe and
so after infecting the local rodents with their particular variety of
pestilence, they vanished from the scene. But their plague, once established,
snowballed relentlessly, devastating Europe and Asia, where panic took control
and law and order broke down. Parents deserted their children, husbands and
wives fled apart seeking security, and all attempts at civil order collapsed.
The clergy were often stoned as they walked along the streets, and doctors were
accused of curing the rich and leaving the poor to die. The rat-infested town of
Hamelin in 1376 described in Browning's poem was no unique example, nor was the
way of eradication anything very new.
Rats abounded in Ireland long before they became established in England.
The Irish called them `French Mice' and they believed that they could be
attracted or repelled, or even killed, by the rhythmic incantations of rhyme and
song. Shakespeare refers to the `rhyming of Irish Rats' in As You Like It, and
Ben Jonson in The Poetaster wrote, `rhyme them to death as they do rats in
Ireland'. However, the Germans had a much more down-to-earth method of reducing
the rat population. They instituted a tax whereby every Jew was required to hand
to the tax gatherer five thousand rat tails per annum.
The year 1498 was another bad year for the plague in Europe. On the bridge
at Frankfurt-on-Main a man was stationed who paid a pfennig for every rat handed
to him. He cut off the tails to help him with his arithmetic later and cast the
bodies into the river (which also happened to be the city's main source of
drinking water).
From the early eighteenth century onward there was a distinct reduction in
the incidence of diseases in Europe, particularly in outbreaks of bubonic
plague. People tended to attribute the fact to the supercedence of the brown rat
over the black type, but it is very likely that the vote of thanks in regard to
human health benefits should really be given to `Pulex Irritans'. This little
flea greatly relishes the blood of both Homo Sapians and Rattus Rattus, but
finds the blood of Rattus Documentus quite repulsive. This choosiness about diet
has been of very great benefit to humanity. Other factors in this health
improvement were man's own increased medical knowledge and his growing awareness
of the virtues of hygiene and organised sanitation in populated areas.
In the mid-nineteenth century France had `troubles', as the Irish would
say. Farm workers were absorbed by the army and agriculture suffered. Crops were
poor and animals and people were hungry. In the year before the siege of Paris,
it was recorded that two to three dozen horses died daily from overwork and
malnutrition. The dead horses which were left overnight in the knacker's yards
were completely cleaned up before morning after the thousands of famished rats
had feasted on them. People were so hungry that a roasted rat garnished with
half a dozen young mice was considered a feast for a gourmet. When preparations
were being made for the siege everyone who possibly could was advised to leave
the city. The rich and the moderately rich did so with alacrity, but the poor,
as usual, clung to their miserable hovels until `persuaded' to leave at
gunpoint.
The black rat (Rattus rattus) is often referred to as the `old English' rat,
but there is no evidence whatsoever to indicate its presence in England before
the tenth century. Some writers say that they came from Italy via France with
the entourage of William the Conqueror and others say that they came from the
Middle East in the ships which brought back the Crusaders from the Holy Wars. It
was said that as many rats as men disembarked at the English ports, but even
that would not amount to a mass invasion, as few of those wh0o set out to fight
the Infidel ever returned to their native shores.
Life in England suited the black rats admirably, for they are country types
by nature and England was at that time a pastoral land. The rats quickly settled
down in attics of mansions or in the thatch of cottages and barns. It was a poor
hovel indeed which could not afford food and lodging for a family of rats, and
the rats repaid the hospitality by helping to reduce the number of less welcome
guests such as moths, beetles and bed-bugs. In the garden and on the farms they
took up their traditional role as insect and pest controllers, just as they had
done in Egypt and Phrygia. They found a few natural enemies in England, such as
stoats, owls and ferrets, so their numbers never became excessive and they were
never considered pests, nor were they ever regarded as a health hazard. They
frequently came to be regarded as pets. Albino rats were not uncommon and even
piebald ones occurred. The white ones were considered particularly suitable as
house pets for very young children.
Such outbreaks of plague as did occur in England were imports, not
indigenous. The trouble invariably started in the ports and was carried inland
by refugees from the stricken coastal towns. The rich fled to their country
estates, but very few of the poor were able to escape because of lack of
transport. Left in their filthy, miserable slums, they died unattended and were
often left unburied. Districts which were badly stricken were generally cordoned
off and on the perimeter were placed guards whose duty it was to catch and hang
anyone attempting to escape from the doomed enclosure.
In 1563 Queen Elizabeth I fled with her court to Windsor Castle. A gallows
was erected without the gates on which any would-be infiltrators from stricken
London town soon found themselves dangling. The worst visitation of plague
occurred in 1663, when London was again very badly affected. Samuel Pepys was
one of the few government officials to remain at his post during that time and
his diary contains many firsthand accounts of life in the plague-ridden city.
The seventeenth century was troubled by civil war and religious strife;
Charles I was beheaded and James II ran away. There was fighting with the Dutch
and the Spanish and there were several outbreaks of plague and pestilence, but
for Rattus-rattus all was wll until the turn of the eighteenth century. The dawn
of the Industrial Revolution changed the entire pattern of English life for both
man and rat. Farm workers became urban artisans. The dreary rows of jerry-built,
back-to-back houses of the new towns were comfortless places compared with the
solidly built country cottages, and for the rat a slate roof was a poor exchange
for kitchen gardens, orchards and fields of golden grain. The Industrial
Revolution was a calamity for Rattus-rattus, but worse things were to come.


To club members - I was given a copy of extracts of MIXED COMPANY which
contained the pages of information about rodents only. For a copy of the
complete version of the book MIXED COMPANY by Anne K Jacques, please visit the
following web-sites to make your enquiries –
New Zealand Anti-Vivisection Society
http://www.nzavs.org.nz/
New Zealand Vegetarian Society
http://www.ivu.org/nzvs/
Royal New Zealand SPCA
http://www.rspcanz.org.nz/
Yours sincerely Rebekah Blackwolf Mitchell-Matthews
Club founder.