Friday 17 August 2012

rats!



In reading the morning paper today,the big story was of,horror of all horrors,a rat infestation.Or at least what qualifies as one in Alberta.Alberta,you see is alleged to be rat free,though I'm not certain I believe that.This most recent infestation involves what is reported to be 52 rats in the dump in Medicine Hat,a town close to the border with Saskatchewan.Alberta employs inspectors in an area near that border with the purpose of keeping our province rat free.The paper noted that a single pair of rats can breed up to 15,000 offspring in a year,which is truly concerning if indeed the province really is rat free.Personally I believe it's hard to keep rats out of the province entirely.Having once worked in a produce warehouse,I encountered what I believed at that time to be a rat.I was informed,though that the creatures I saw,three of them,were in fact chinchillas which were believed to have come in from Mexico with a load of vegetables.I also encountered a scorpion in that same warehouse which came out of a trailer containing watermelons.Neither of these creatures are indigenous to Alberta, but they seem to have no problem getting here by truck.So I find it difficult to believe that rats cannot get here as well.Be that as it may,I think it's likely true that Alberta does a very good job of controlling rats.Otherwise there would be a far greater amount of damage to our sizable grain crops.And,personally,I've never seen a rat here in this province.That seems logical to me to some extent.Rats,or at least Norway rats travel by ship,and there are very few places in North America with fewer seaports(Alberta has exactly zero) or ships than here.The closest ports are nearly 800 miles away on the coast of British Columbia and I suppose crossing the Rocky Mountains,at least by normal means of migration would be somewhat difficult for rats.But obviously it's not impossible as the 52 rats in Medicine Hat prove.the whole point is to keep them limited and inspectors seem to be doing a good job.They have,in fact killed all the ones that they have found,though they may not have found them all.But I'm quite confident Alberta will remain rat free to the extent that it already is,which is to say not entirely.However,relative to most other places,there will be very few rats here.

Just as an aside to this story,it's interesting to note the actual reaction of Albertans to the presence of rats in our province.In the very same newspaper,on the very same page there was also a report of someone having found a human foot and a human head by the side of a river in the greater Toronto area.Residents there were understandably horrified by those events.But,and maybe this is just for a lack of any more sensational news here,people I talked to here were hardly less horrified here about the thought of being invaded by rats.It's interesting to note how these two news stories were arranged in the first place,one being local and the other being national in scope.But it really wouldn't be the first time that the papers arranged stories in such a way,no doubt to cause us to make associations that are not really natural in context,or in magnitude.Well,I suppose you need to do something to sell papers.

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