A GUY'S VIEW
The Rat family lived happily and well in St. George for many years. Many generations of Rats had grown up in the lush vegetation which abounded in that parish.
Jim and Jane Rat were two of a large litter that were born into that family. Although they had many siblings, they enjoyed an especially close affinity. The cane fields and potato patches were their playground.
They stayed well away from humans. Whenever there was a likelihood of human contact, they fled. This they were able to do successfully because they were very athletic. When it was necessary to move from one field to another, they moved so quickly that by the time a human saw them, they were gone.
One day, Jim decided to explore the produce that was on a truck. While he was still exploring, the truck sped off. By the time that he was able to safely disembark, he was in the Cheapside market in the City. He was completely lost, but he knew that he needed to seek cover in a hurry.
While hiding in a tight space among a group of trays, he met Tim, a town boy who knew the market well. Tim befriended him and in next to no time he was moving around in the City.
With Tim, Jim ventured far and wide. A wonderful part of his adventure was the diet to which Tim introduced him. In the City, his diet was not confined to potatoes and sugar cane. The restaurants put out all types of delicacies. He now dined on fried chicken, roti skins, and a wide range of foods to which he would never have had access to in St. George.
Taking the lead from his new friends, he became more nocturnal. It made more sense to rest during the day and eat at night, for the City was always bustling with people during the day. Plus, the restaurants usually put out the wonderful foods at night.
Jim was a wanderer, but not for long. He eventually linked up with a shapely heavy who fascinated him. In St. George, all the females he knew were slim chicks. Not so in the City. The females here were more womanly. They were big, powerful females. This was a new experience for him.
It was not long before Jim had a number of young Jims running around the place. This was not a problem because raising a family in the City was easy, simply because food was plentiful.
In his senior years, Jim wondered how his St. George family was doing. He decided to hitch a ride back to that parish to give them a look up. The truck that he travelled on parked almost exactly where he had boarded the one that took him into the City. When it seemed safe, he climbed down the left rear wheel which was close to the grass and he went back into the field.
But his descent was a lot slower that his ascent was years before. Not only was he older. He was five times heavier than he was when he left.
He was surprised that he could find none of his family when he first returned. He searched the potato and sugar cane fields for a few days before he came across someone who knew him. He was also surprised that the other members of the Rat family he met were all as big as he was.
When word got around that he had returned, a number of Rats came to meet him. This was the first time that he had recognised how big he was. The approaching family members lumbered towards him. They were not just fat; they were morbidly obese. But no bigger than he was.
“How you all get so,” he asked. He could understand his fatty town diet would produce that unfortunate result in him, but his country cousins’ healthy diet should not create that result. It was not long before he understood why.
The Rats no longer survived on a vegetarian diet. Human garbage was all over the place and, therefore, the sweet, fattening food that humans ate was never scarce. It was no longer necessary to live in fields. Some of them took up permanent residence in the midst of piles of garbage as these food havens never moved. And people kept adding to them.
As he approached one of these feeding stations, he could see the bags of garbage being tossed about by his cousins. He considered this risky behaviour, for this obvious occupation was bound to attract the attention of humans, he thought. He was assured that that was not a problem.
The country Rats explained to him the two main reasons why he need not be concerned about human discovery. The humans were busy looking for new places to dump their garbage, since the Sanitation Service Authority never moved what was discarded. So people simply tossed new bags onto the heap, and when it overflowed, they moved a little further down the road and started a new heap.
The second reason was that the Rats were now so big, that humans were afraid of them. Rather than run from humans, the humans were now running from them.
Only a few days ago, a friend from St. Thomas told me that she encountered a rodent which she believed to be a member of this Rat family. This was not a normal rat. She went into her yard and saw a strange animal that she did not recognise. It had the general shape of a rat, but it was so big that she thought that it had to be some unknown creature.
It was behaving strangely. It was sniffing the ground like a dog on the trail of an escaped convict. It was in no hurry and was not shy.
She stared from the safety of her back door for a while. She concluded that, despite its huge size, it had to be a rat. She clapped her hands and made a shooing noise in the hope that it would run away. The creature looked up at her and continued to mind its business while ignoring her.
I believe my friend had encountered a member of that large and growing Rat family which originated in St. George, but has now spread out across the island.
If you come across a rodent that is almost as big as a small dog and is too fat to run, approach it with caution. It may be armed with disease and dangerous.