Rats : Observations On The History And Habitat Of The City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants Part 4

Shortly after I first heard about Bobby Corrigan, I learned from an exterminator that he was going to be speaking at a barbecue out on Long Island thrown by a large pest control equipment supplier, in a town called Hicksville. Accordingly, I took a train out to Hicksville and caught a cab in the rain and, in the back of an industrial park, found the pesticide distributing company. There was a grill with hot dogs and hamburgers set up under a canopy outside, and people ate inside the warehouse, which was full of traps and poison. I listened to several presentations about mice and rats, and also about roaches, termites, and flies, and I met people in the pest control industry who were offering special barbecue sale prices on roach paste and fly traps and rodent poison. I sat next to a guy who heckled a speaker when she said she was going to run up to the front of the crowd as quickly as a mouse. "Oh, like you're going to run eleven miles an hour!" he said, to the laughter of the pest-control-operator-filled audience. Early on at the barbecue, I realized that Bobby Corrigan was not actually going to be there. Fortunately, I heard about a huge upcoming rodent control conference in Chicago. Not only was Bobby Corrigan organizing this conference in Chicago-he was scheduled to give the keynote speech.

So I took another another trip, figuring that not only would I meet Bobby Corrigan but I might get an opportunity to see rats elsewhere, to compare and contrast them with my rats. I went to Penn Station and took an overnight train to Chicago, arriving at rush hour, at which point I was able to stop in the middle of Union Station and lean back against a wall and watch people as they streamed in and out of train-track exits and entrances, in and out of the exits to Chicago's streets, of the entrance and exits to a restaurant also marked with signs indicating areas for ordering food to go versus to stay. I smelled the food. I grabbed some. After that I pushed haltingly through the crowd and got on another train to Milwaukee-a city that seemed to me to be worth visiting before I met Bobby Corrigan as it has a long tradition of being ahead of the curve nationally in terms of pest control. None other than Dave Davis, America's first and greatest rat expert, once said, "I have visited a number of cities, and Milwaukee is surprisingly good-no, let's say spectacularly good-as far as rat control is concerned." In addition, I'd heard that the mayor was going to hold a press conference-perfectly timed, as far as I was concerned-regarding rat control. trip, figuring that not only would I meet Bobby Corrigan but I might get an opportunity to see rats elsewhere, to compare and contrast them with my rats. I went to Penn Station and took an overnight train to Chicago, arriving at rush hour, at which point I was able to stop in the middle of Union Station and lean back against a wall and watch people as they streamed in and out of train-track exits and entrances, in and out of the exits to Chicago's streets, of the entrance and exits to a restaurant also marked with signs indicating areas for ordering food to go versus to stay. I smelled the food. I grabbed some. After that I pushed haltingly through the crowd and got on another train to Milwaukee-a city that seemed to me to be worth visiting before I met Bobby Corrigan as it has a long tradition of being ahead of the curve nationally in terms of pest control. None other than Dave Davis, America's first and greatest rat expert, once said, "I have visited a number of cities, and Milwaukee is surprisingly good-no, let's say spectacularly good-as far as rat control is concerned." In addition, I'd heard that the mayor was going to hold a press conference-perfectly timed, as far as I was concerned-regarding rat control.

MY TIME SPENT IN MILWAUKEE was hurried-I mostly ran around. If I had been observing my own movements through the city that day, I would have noted myself

* arriving at the station, then immediately seeing, right where I stepped down off the train, a rat bait station, a Protecta model, manufactured by Bell Labs, in which the bait was stale and partially eaten-a sign; * wandering tentatively across town and pa.s.sing by the Wisconsin Workers Memorial, a park that featured a sculpture that is also a time line noting the years 1911, when Wisconsin enacted the nation's first workers' compensation law, and 1920, when Wisconsin drafted the first unemployment compensation law; a quote on a plaque read, "The 19th Century belief that unemployment was a matter of individual bad luck or bad character was deeply ingrained in Wisconsin and American culture, and the realization that in fact it was an unavoidable feature of the modern industrial economy came only slowly"; * wandering tentatively across town and pa.s.sing by the Wisconsin Workers Memorial, a park that featured a sculpture that is also a time line noting the years 1911, when Wisconsin enacted the nation's first workers' compensation law, and 1920, when Wisconsin drafted the first unemployment compensation law; a quote on a plaque read, "The 19th Century belief that unemployment was a matter of individual bad luck or bad character was deeply ingrained in Wisconsin and American culture, and the realization that in fact it was an unavoidable feature of the modern industrial economy came only slowly"; * checking into a great old hotel, the Pfister, a hotel from the days before Milwaukee suffered rioting and a huge recession and lost sixty thousand manufacturing jobs, from the days when Milwaukee was a brewery capital full of German refugees fleeing the revolutions of 1848 who knew how to make great beer and, due in part to their experience as chemists, rodent poison; * checking into a great old hotel, the Pfister, a hotel from the days before Milwaukee suffered rioting and a huge recession and lost sixty thousand manufacturing jobs, from the days when Milwaukee was a brewery capital full of German refugees fleeing the revolutions of 1848 who knew how to make great beer and, due in part to their experience as chemists, rodent poison; * wis.h.i.+ng I could slip up to the Pfister's antique-looking bar and order a beer and wait for someone to ask me what I was doing in town so I could say, "Rats," but instead going up to my room and calling my wife, who told me to hurry up and call Don Schaewe; * wis.h.i.+ng I could slip up to the Pfister's antique-looking bar and order a beer and wait for someone to ask me what I was doing in town so I could say, "Rats," but instead going up to my room and calling my wife, who told me to hurry up and call Don Schaewe; * calling Don Schaewe, a rodent control official in Milwaukee, who was jealous that I was going to see Bobby Corrigan and suggested I come over and get an idea of the rodent control strategy in town prior to the Milwaukee mayor's rat press conference the next day, and who gave me directions to the Nuisance Control Field Office, which I subsequently gave to a taxi driver, who, when he heard the address, grimaced such that I asked him if it was a bad neighborhood or something, to which he replied, "Bad? * calling Don Schaewe, a rodent control official in Milwaukee, who was jealous that I was going to see Bobby Corrigan and suggested I come over and get an idea of the rodent control strategy in town prior to the Milwaukee mayor's rat press conference the next day, and who gave me directions to the Nuisance Control Field Office, which I subsequently gave to a taxi driver, who, when he heard the address, grimaced such that I asked him if it was a bad neighborhood or something, to which he replied, "Bad? Bad Bad is not the right word. is not the right word. Worst! Worst! You cannot walk in the streets. Crime, drugs! I never pick up fares over there, not in my life"; You cannot walk in the streets. Crime, drugs! I never pick up fares over there, not in my life"; * getting out of the cab, thinking the neighborhood didn't seem so bad, and then quickly knocking on the locked door and entering a nice office full of very nice pest control people; * getting out of the cab, thinking the neighborhood didn't seem so bad, and then quickly knocking on the locked door and entering a nice office full of very nice pest control people; * walking around the office as Schaewe showed off the large closet containing various rodenticides, which, he suddenly realized to his momentary astonishment, had a small mouse infestation problem ("Huh," Don said, "that's like somebody breaking into a concentration camp"), then listening as Schaewe talked about, first, the old days when the rodent control staff used a meat-based rat poison and ground the meat on an old meat grinder that is still there, and second, a recent innovation in which computers are linking crime to rodent infestation; * walking around the office as Schaewe showed off the large closet containing various rodenticides, which, he suddenly realized to his momentary astonishment, had a small mouse infestation problem ("Huh," Don said, "that's like somebody breaking into a concentration camp"), then listening as Schaewe talked about, first, the old days when the rodent control staff used a meat-based rat poison and ground the meat on an old meat grinder that is still there, and second, a recent innovation in which computers are linking crime to rodent infestation; * taking a ride with Don to the neighborhood where the mayor was going to hold a rat press conference the next day, and seeing evidence of serious rat infestation in the alleys behind the neighborhood of modest one- and two-family homes that either looked as if they had seen tough times but were well kept or looked the same but weren't well kept and had lots of trash littered on their lawns-along with evidence of serious infestation that included rat trails, rat burrows, and dead rats; * taking a ride with Don to the neighborhood where the mayor was going to hold a rat press conference the next day, and seeing evidence of serious rat infestation in the alleys behind the neighborhood of modest one- and two-family homes that either looked as if they had seen tough times but were well kept or looked the same but weren't well kept and had lots of trash littered on their lawns-along with evidence of serious infestation that included rat trails, rat burrows, and dead rats; * getting a ride from Don back downtown, where he dropped me off at a sausage place (where I ate some of the best sausage I've ever tasted), from where I proceeded to the Milwaukee Public Library, where I looked at beautiful Audubon prints and read about Milwaukee's rat control history, noting, for example, the numerous "Starve a Rat" campaigns, the free rat films the city showed in rat-infested neighborhoods (t.i.tles included * getting a ride from Don back downtown, where he dropped me off at a sausage place (where I ate some of the best sausage I've ever tasted), from where I proceeded to the Milwaukee Public Library, where I looked at beautiful Audubon prints and read about Milwaukee's rat control history, noting, for example, the numerous "Starve a Rat" campaigns, the free rat films the city showed in rat-infested neighborhoods (t.i.tles included Listen to the Rat Man, Professor Rat, Listen to the Rat Man, Professor Rat, and and The Rat King), The Rat King), and the guy who went around in a rat suit giving kids rat pins-the health department's uniformed sanitarian in the fifties, Lieutenant Archibald Kowald, used to say, "We look upon people as souls, and we want them to have a better world to live in"; and the guy who went around in a rat suit giving kids rat pins-the health department's uniformed sanitarian in the fifties, Lieutenant Archibald Kowald, used to say, "We look upon people as souls, and we want them to have a better world to live in"; * then heading to Maeders, an old German restaurant that Don had recommended ("The last time we went there my wife wanted to try duck so she asked for duck and they gave her a whole duck!"), where I drank two huge gla.s.ses of German beer and had a sampler plate that included goulash, schnitzel, pork loin, and what was billed as "Germany's favorite soup," a soup made with duck and liver pate, not to mention dessert; * then heading to Maeders, an old German restaurant that Don had recommended ("The last time we went there my wife wanted to try duck so she asked for duck and they gave her a whole duck!"), where I drank two huge gla.s.ses of German beer and had a sampler plate that included goulash, schnitzel, pork loin, and what was billed as "Germany's favorite soup," a soup made with duck and liver pate, not to mention dessert; * then-after I'd paid the bill and read the thank-you letters from overweight, dead celebrities on the wall, in addition to thank-you letters from healthier-looking celebrities like Boris Karloff ("If I had a whole regiment with me I could have done justice to the meal you placed before me . . .," wrote Karloff, in a pleasing cursive)-heading into the alleys of Milwaukee looking for rats and having trouble: feeling fat, bloated, practically rolling through the alleys downtown, looking for trash and rats and seeing neither, realizing that the alleys I went into were incredibly clean, with the trash neatly stored, with only a moderate amount of grease, understanding, at last, that I was too disgustingly sated to really have my heart in ratting; * then-after I'd paid the bill and read the thank-you letters from overweight, dead celebrities on the wall, in addition to thank-you letters from healthier-looking celebrities like Boris Karloff ("If I had a whole regiment with me I could have done justice to the meal you placed before me . . .," wrote Karloff, in a pleasing cursive)-heading into the alleys of Milwaukee looking for rats and having trouble: feeling fat, bloated, practically rolling through the alleys downtown, looking for trash and rats and seeing neither, realizing that the alleys I went into were incredibly clean, with the trash neatly stored, with only a moderate amount of grease, understanding, at last, that I was too disgustingly sated to really have my heart in ratting; * stumbling into the hotel room where I took some aspirin and collapsed. * stumbling into the hotel room where I took some aspirin and collapsed.

THE NEXT DAY, A CABDRIVER reluctantly took me to the mayor's rat control press conference in the rat-infested neighborhood that I'd been to the day before. Television news crews were in an alley by the time I arrived; they were waiting to interview the mayor, John Norquist. They were willing to interview the mayor about rats, though I soon learned that they were undoubtedly interested in the s.e.xual hara.s.sment case he was involved in at that time. He had recently admitted to having an affair with a woman on his staff. The woman had charged that the mayor had threatened to withhold block grants to Hispanic and African-American neighborhoods if this woman, who is Hispanic, "refused to heed Mayor Norquist's s.e.xual desires," as one news report put it. Myself, I was merely interested in talking to the mayor about rat control.

While we all waited for the mayor to arrive, Don Schaewe was pointing out all the rat holes in the area and the disparity between trash-filled lawns and cleaned-up lawns for the TV reporters, and then talking to one of the veteran exterminators, Gabriel Perez. Perez reminisced about the time he was working in a neighborhood and a woman invited him in her house to see a rat. She showed him the room with the rat in it. He entered, looked at the rat, and then, before he knew it, the woman locked the door behind him. "She wouldn't let me out until I killed the rat, so I had to kill the rat," he recalled. He also recalled the extensive training that he'd gone through years before, when there was considerably more government funding for rodent control. "We just talked rats eight hours a day," he said. "Sometimes I would leave and my head would be just like rats, rats, rats." rats, rats, rats."

In a while, a police car with its lights on pulled up to the back alley and then a s.h.i.+ny black SUV pulled up behind it. The mayor got out of the SUV. He was tall and charismatic with a warm grin and looked a little like a lithe John Wayne in a business suit. When the conference began, the department of neighborhood services showed off some charts; officials spoke about the rat crackdown in the neighborhood: the plan was to go door-to-door with flyers that alerted people to the neighborhood's "chronic and increasing rat population." The flyers instructed people to clean up their garbage or be fined. Then the mayor spoke: "Rats eat human food. That's what they eat. So if you don't want rats around, don't feed them. That's the message we're trying to get out." The mayor held up a chart and smiled for the camera. "If people don't like rats, don't feed them. It's as simple as that. People should look in the mirror first."

The mayor turned to the cameras. "Any questions?"

There were no questions.

At this point, the mayor and a couple of dozen volunteers from community organizations began to walk down the streets to hand out flyers. The mayor was all smiles. His bodyguard-a big African American guy, an ex-cop, in a suit-was a few steps behind him, wearing no expression at all. The mayor stopped at the first house on the corner, but it looked as if it were abandoned-until a big, hungry-looking German shepherd came out on the roof of the second floor and began barking ferociously and then a little girl appeared on the front porch.

"Why aren't these children in school?" Rosa Cameron, an alder-woman from the area, said. The alderwoman was among the community group members. She bent over and looked at the girl's skin and thought she might have worms. "This is one of the worst blocks, as far as my district goes," Cameron said. She stood up and began walking again. "You know, anytime you push for the poor, it's a fight.

The mayor, meanwhile, continued to greet the residents. He lingered at the home of a man and a woman whose home was relatively immaculate; he knocked on the doors of people who rented the old, worn-out houses, and the renters were either incredulous or wary. One man came out his front door and continued talking on his phone and watching the mayor as the mayor approached, smiling and sticking out his hand. The man kept his phone to his ear when he shook hands with the mayor. "Hey, Mayor," the man said, "you just come back at night and they'll be running at your feet."

The mayor proceeded to the next house, walking along jauntily, smiling, waving. At the next house, the man and the woman at the door stared at him. "Hi," the mayor said. "Did you get the word?"

"Yeah, well, they're foreclosing in a couple of days. I'm gonna be out," said the man.

"Okay, well, wherever you move, don't feed the rats," the mayor said, before smiling and waving good-bye.

On the way up the front walk to one house, the mayor's bodyguard ran up to the mayor and whispered in his ear just as he was about to knock on the door. The alderwoman noticed something was up. "I don't know what he's going in there for. His bodyguard's getting nervous," she said. After the bodyguard whispered to him, the mayor quickly turned away from the house-it seemed as if the mayor's bodyguard thought he had steered the mayor away from someone who was dangerous.

The mayor visited a few more houses, and in a few minutes the event started to break up.

I was ready to go. Don Schaewe wished me well. "Say h.e.l.lo to Bobby Corrigan for me when you get to Chicago," he said.

I was trying to figure out how I was ever going to find a cab when one of the mayor's aides offered me a ride back to the hotel. I got in the s.h.i.+ny black SUV. The mayor was in the front seat, leaning back, his long legs barely folded in. He appeared relaxed and was making me feel comfortable: hearing that I was from New York City, he said that his brother-in-law, a musician, had played with t.i.to Puente, the salsa player from the Bronx. The bodyguard drove and he was doing a good job of being quiet and formidable-looking. As we all drove out of the rat-infested neighborhood and into the beautifully renovated downtown, the mayor was going over some of his impressive credentials as an advocate for urban renewal and job creation; he talked about some of the factories he had encouraged to open up in the area; he talked about job creation plans. I was making notes when I made a remark that questioned whether crime was not somehow linked to poverty.

"If you're looking for a poverty angle-well, if people really really wanted to get a job they could," the mayor said, and turned around in his seat to look at me. "Do you know why people commit crime?" he asked rhetorically. "I mean, it's not like it's wanted to get a job they could," the mayor said, and turned around in his seat to look at me. "Do you know why people commit crime?" he asked rhetorically. "I mean, it's not like it's La Boheme La Boheme and Mimi's in the back room starving. It's fun. It's a thrill. You break into the house, and that's more fun than dipping metal in a chemical in a heat-transfer plant. Instead of working, you go break into a house. It's more fun." and Mimi's in the back room starving. It's fun. It's a thrill. You break into the house, and that's more fun than dipping metal in a chemical in a heat-transfer plant. Instead of working, you go break into a house. It's more fun."

The mayor laughed and turned back to look out the front window of the SUV.

"Until you get caught," he went on.

"Right?" He turned to his bodyguard. "Ask him," him," he said, motioning to his bodyguard. "He was a cop." he said, motioning to his bodyguard. "He was a cop."

"It's a thrill," the bodyguard said. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw the bodyguard looking at me and smiling.

A few months later, Mayor Norquist settled the s.e.xual hara.s.sment charges out of court. He announced that he would not run for a fifth term. Also, Rosa Cameron, the alderwoman I'd been walking around with, pleaded guilty to Tunneling $28,000 worth of federal grants intended for community groups into her campaign fund; she was sentenced to jail time and testified against other city officials.

After I finally got to Chicago and eventually home, I called Don Schaewe and he told me that the rat population in the neighborhood had gone down for a while. He was as optimistic as he could be: "That's a tough neighborhood. You're always gonna have some rats there. We knocked 'em down, but you'll never get rid of them."

RAT CATCHERS OF AMERICA! MICE trappers of all the United States! Men (mostly, though a few women) representing places such as Smithereen Pest Management Services in Evanston, Illinois; and Western Exterminator Co., in Anaheim; California, and Wil-Kil Pest Control in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. People from Varment Guard in Columbus, Ohio, and National Bugmobiles in Victoria, Texas, who, when they get the frenzied phone call, lay out the poisons that the rats eat, inspiring the rats' deaths! Academics who study rats and work with the pest control industry or with public health inst.i.tutions! Those who attempt to keep this land rodent-free-they would all be at the Rodent Management Summit sponsored by Pest Control Technology Pest Control Technology magazine and held at the Courtyard Marriott in downtown Chicago and orchestrated by Bobby Corrigan! I was in rat expert heaven. The publisher of magazine and held at the Courtyard Marriott in downtown Chicago and orchestrated by Bobby Corrigan! I was in rat expert heaven. The publisher of Pest Control Technology, Pest Control Technology, who opened the conference, described the event as a gathering of, in his words, "the finest minds in the pest control industry," all gathered in Chicago, that city of which the poet Carl Sandburg has sung: who opened the conference, described the event as a gathering of, in his words, "the finest minds in the pest control industry," all gathered in Chicago, that city of which the poet Carl Sandburg has sung:

Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coa.r.s.e and strong and cunning . . .

I would think of living there, in Chicago, singing with lifted head, except that the city I know is New York-my birth city and, as a result, the only city in which I feel comfortable with lifted head singing. But while there I was in heaven, bathed in the resplendent light of rodent knowledge, meeting, for instance, William Jackson.

Jackson is America's rodent expert emeritus. He got his start working on the first wild-rat studies with Dave Davis in Baltimore, as I have already mentioned. With Davis, Jackson went out into alleys and studied, among other things, cat feces, noting a low amount of rat parts in cat feces, thereby indicating that alley cats and alley rats generally keep their distance. He has helped governments all over the world with their rat problems. When I met Professor Jackson, at the c.o.c.ktail party on the second night, we talked about the rats that he'd investigated in the Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands in the 1960s-the rats that had survived nuclear testing in the Pacific. He said that the rats had survived the blast by staying deep down in their burrows, and that, upon investigating, the only abnormality that he could find was a change in the structure of the rats' upper jaws, a change that did not seem to hinder the rat in any way. During his presentation, Jackson lectured on rat poisons. He talked about the time after World War II when America was especially chemical-happy-antibiotics had just been used successfully on the battlefield, and DDT had broken a wartime typhus outbreak in Italy. "The att.i.tude there was that chemistry was going to save us, that chemistry was going to take care of all our problems," Jackson said. Warfarin, the first modern anticoagulant rat poison, had been discovered accidentally at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, in 1948, when a chemist noticed that catde died of internal bleeding after eating spoiled sweet clover. The "clover chemical" was soon isolated and fed to laboratory rats, in an effort to find a cure for arthritis. The rats died.

After Jackson described the invention of warfarin, the pest control operators seemed as if they were getting a little bored-my feeling was that they mostly just wanted to know how to get rats. But Jackson pressed on, explaining that Norway rats became resistant to rat poisons in the seventies. The resistance, first noted on a farm in Scotland in 1960, was soon spotted on farms in America and around the country. In 1976, 65 percent of the rats trapped in three neighborhoods in Chicago survived warfarin, and in Wisconsin, there was a report of rats subsisting on warfarin-treated grain. Also in 1976, the Bureau of Pest Control found that 12 percent of the rats in New York City were resistant to the rat poison the city was using, most of the poison-resistant rats residing in East Harlem and the Lower East Side. A new rat-killing anticoagulant was soon developed, but recently, rats in England have become immune to this second generation of poisons. Jackson predicted that the same will happen in the U.S.: "Sooner or later, it's going to come." A few of the people representing companies that sell rodenticides got a little squirmy when Jackson said, "The use of poison is a failure of sanitation."

I had lunch with Stephen Franz, the vector specialist in the division of infectious diseases in the New York State department of public health, who worked on the Urban Rat Control Program in the 1980s. (We had pasta, as he's a vegetarian.) Franz has studied rats in India. He has designed huge city-size rodent-proofing plans; he advised on the rodent-proofing of the palace of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein when the U.S. was an ally of Iraq's. And he once managed a wild Norway rat colony of about six hundred rats in upstate New York, until the Urban Rat Control Program lost its funding and the colony was handed over to scientists who experimented with rat poisons. I listened to him describe high asthma rates in vermin-infested areas, and he talked about being in a building that was so full of c.o.c.kroaches that you could hear them moving. "You're not supposed to be able to hear c.o.c.kroaches," he said.

Also at the conference were representatives from Bell Labs, who were selling their latest rodenticides and offering samples of a new kind of snap trap. Some sort of barely hidden rodenticide manufacturing rivalry was going on-I got the feeling that some other rodenticide companies would not have come to the conference if they had known that Bell Labs, one of the conference sponsors, would be there with banners and key chains and pens and buckets of the rival rat poison. In the hotel fitness room, I ran on a treadmill alongside Al Smith, the national sales manager of Lipha Tech, an American division of a giant French pharmaceutical company, whose U.S. headquarters are in Wisconsin, and another time later that spring, I even took him up on an invitation to visit the rodenticide factory, where I sat down with Lipha Tech's plastic bait station, which is the Ferrari of rodenticide bait stations, with all of its rat-appealing corridors and the easy bait application features. I also saw what Smith called "the active ingredient." The active ingredient is what kills the rodents. In this case it is mixed with grains and molded according to various specifications and dyed a kind of aquamarine color that is meant to dissuade humans from eating it (rats don't see color). The active ingredient is kept in fifty-five-gallon-drum-size containers, enough to kill millions and millions of rats, in addition to other things. The active ingredient is mixed into the grain-based bait in a giant machine that looked like something out of an automobile plant. The men operating the machine treated the active ingredient carefully as they walked along the little aquamarine-colored trails of unpoisoned grain. I found the active ingredient to be a little scary; just standing near it made me nervous. On the way out, Al Smith mentioned some of the many clients around the country that used Lipha Tech's poison baits, including a noted animal rights group.

But back in Chicago, I attended presentation after presentation, with t.i.tles Hke "Trapping Strategies for Rats and Mice" and "Poison Baiting Strategies." I sat among the pest control operators as they nodded and asked questions about droppings and mating and state regulations of rodenticides and the use of black lights to detect rodent urine. At the breaks I was able to hobn.o.b with exterminators from all over the country, and in so doing, I started to get a feel for the rats of America. I met a man who got rid of rats at the Was.h.i.+ngton Monument, for instance; he talked about the history of rat infestations in the White House, and the historical controversy over the extent of rats in the White House (a revisionist school has tried to argue lately that the Nixon rats weren't that bad). I talked to a guy from the Pacific Northwest who kept his rat poison in plastic sandwich bags within the bait stations so that rats could still get it but slugs could not, an idea that appealed to another guy from the Southwest who had a similar problem with fire ants. I met a man who had killed rats at Mark Twain's house in Hannibal, Missouri-Les s.h.i.+nn from Reliable Termite & Pest Control. The exterminator from Hawaii was dressed as if he were from Hawaii and told me that black rats love coconuts. I met a man who killed a lot of rats in a nice hotel in downtown Houston, and I met Bill Martinez of ABC Pest & Lawn in Austin. "I don't know what it's like for these places up North, but you get a dead rat in a wall in Austin in the summer and ooooh-weee! ooooh-weee! It It stinks!" stinks!"

After the hobn.o.bbing, another presentation commenced, and a representative of a large pest control firm said, "The bad news is rodents are going to win this war against us humans. The good news is there's a lot of business."

A nice thing that happened to me was running into George Ladd, from Bonzai de Bug in New York. It was great to see a familiar face, and he recognized me right away. "Oh, man, it's great to see you, guy!" he said. "Have you talked to Bobby yet?"

ACTUALLY, I HAD ALREADY MET Bobby Corrigan, in a sense. In the interest of fairness, I should mention that I had talked to him once, briefly, just before the conference. I had called him and apparently caught him at a busy time, and he told me that rather than talk to him about rats, all I had to do was read his latest book, which would cover everything I needed to know. Of course, his book is ent.i.tled Rodent Control, Rodent Control, and when I finally got my hands on a copy, I devoured it. I also read as many of his columns for and when I finally got my hands on a copy, I devoured it. I also read as many of his columns for Pest Control Technology Pest Control Technology as I could get my hands on, in addition to a story written about him when he was named one of the pest control industry's leaders a few years ago. So I already knew that he was born on Long Island, the son of an Irish laborer. "With eight brothers and sisters we were barely able to put food on the table, but when you are poor, you compensate by hanging out together as a family," he once told a as I could get my hands on, in addition to a story written about him when he was named one of the pest control industry's leaders a few years ago. So I already knew that he was born on Long Island, the son of an Irish laborer. "With eight brothers and sisters we were barely able to put food on the table, but when you are poor, you compensate by hanging out together as a family," he once told a Pest Control Technology Pest Control Technology reporter. "We realized that we had each other so we looked out for one another." He worked as a supermarket checkout clerk for two years before saving enough money to attend the State University of New York at Farmingdale, where he studied under another well-known rodent expert, Austin Frishman, whose lecture on structural pest control changed Bobby Corrigan's life-he switched his major from oceanography to pest control the next day. reporter. "We realized that we had each other so we looked out for one another." He worked as a supermarket checkout clerk for two years before saving enough money to attend the State University of New York at Farmingdale, where he studied under another well-known rodent expert, Austin Frishman, whose lecture on structural pest control changed Bobby Corrigan's life-he switched his major from oceanography to pest control the next day.

Upon graduation Bobby worked for Fumex, a Long Island pest control firm, and had accounts all over New York City. After three years in the field, he went to Purdue University, in Indiana. Then, after a brief stint with Terminex, he returned to Purdue as vertebrate pest management specialist, a one-year position that turned into a sixteen-year job. He left Purdue to open his own pest control firm when his wife, a molecular entomologist in Purdue's entomology department, moved to Earlham College, a Quaker school, where she studied things like the DNA of finches. Today, they live on a seventy-acre farm in Indiana where they spend their spare time planting species of trees and gra.s.ses that are considered native and getting rid of the species that are considered invasive. Aside from studying bugs and animals on his farm, Corrigan enjoys writing poetry.

Reading Bobby Corrigan's book, one immediately gets a sense of why he is the superstar of the rodent control industry. First of all-and most obviously-he knows all about rats. He has studied them with a careful patience. And if he is not an expert on a particular area of rat infestation (rats in sewers, for example) then he is fully aware of the latest research (in the case of rats in sewers, Bruce Colvin's studies, which showed that rats prefer older, brick-lined sewers to newer ones, for nesting purposes). Just Bobby Corrigan's photos alone-of rat burrows, of greasy rat trails along walls and in ceilings, of rats peering nearly unseen from secret places-are enough to impress even the modest student of rats, and they would make a great wildlife calendar if people used photos of dead-gra.s.s-covered strips along a broken city sidewalk or of sewer holes or of splotches of rodent feces in calendars. Implicit in his work is the idea that there is no such thing as a monster rat. In Rodent Control, Rodent Control, the rat is not evil. The rat is a rat. Of course, Bobby Corrigan understands that when an exterminator suddenly and unexpectedly finds himself face-to-face with a rat, it can be difficult to stay levelheaded. Bobby Corrigan has written, "Frightened you are-composed and clear thinking you are not." the rat is not evil. The rat is a rat. Of course, Bobby Corrigan understands that when an exterminator suddenly and unexpectedly finds himself face-to-face with a rat, it can be difficult to stay levelheaded. Bobby Corrigan has written, "Frightened you are-composed and clear thinking you are not."

But I believe that the secret to Corrigan's success is that he understands as much about the rat hunters as the rats; he relates to the man in the field, the guy with a can of roach poison on his back, who has been stuck in traffic all day and accidentally frightened the old woman in the upstairs apartment and is now looking down a toilet bowl as something rises up from the hole in the bottom. He writes of such a scene in the section ent.i.tled "A Rat in the Toilet Bowl," and he counsels the exterminator to stay calm, but fully understands that he or she may not be able to do so. Specifically, he recommends using a wild-animal loop snare, and placing the animal in a sack to bring it outside, but again, he confesses that he did not use a wild-animal loop snare the first time he saw a rat coming out of a toilet bowl. "As a novice pest control operator encountering a live toilet rat for the first time," he writes, "this author admits to first flus.h.i.+ng the toilet and then eventually pinning down and crus.h.i.+ng a toilet rat with the wand of a one-gallon compressed-air sprayer. It was neither a pretty scene or a 'professional event,' that's for sure."

Similarly, Bobby Corrigan understands the Sisyphean nature of extermination; while the persistence of rats is good for business in general, it can also be demoralizing, especially when the client has already paid you and expects you to keep coming back until every rat has disappeared. "Most pest management professionals and employees of warehouses and granaries often speak of their occasional encounter with 'smart rats,'" he writes in the chapter ent.i.tled "Challenging Rodent Situations." "And writing from experience, it once took this author three weeks of nearly daily effort to take out a single rat from a granary." Elsewhere he states, "In one government building in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., it took nearly one year before an elusive rat finally died of supposedly natural causes (old age). One of its legs was missing a foot, but the leg itself appeared healed over for some time. Perhaps this rat had lost its foot some months ago in a rat trap." Here Corrigan counsels that in certain special cases, where a single cagey rat just won't go away, a man with a rifle and night-vision gear may be the only way to eliminate it: "A sharpshooter quietly lying in wait at night is often used to take out the troublesome rat."

I spotted Bobby Corrigan just as the conference was about to begin, on the first morning. Approximately five feet and nine inches tall with light brown hair on the sides of his head and bald on top, with a mustache and wire-rimmed gla.s.ses, with a pen in his pocket and a name tag that said BOBBY, Corrigan was surrounded by rodent control operators who were lining up to speak with him, to shake his hand. His head twitched back and forth from exterminator to exterminator, each one's name instinctively on the tip of his tongue.

At the podium he had the exterminators immediately at ease, even laughing on several occasions. "Sometimes, people ask me, 'Well, how do I know I've got a breeding male?' Well, it's pretty easy to tell if you got a breeding male," he said. He was one with his audience. He didn't act as if he knew more than they did, even though he was the only person there who had photos of himself sitting amidst heaps of chicken dung in a poultry house watching and taking notes on rats as they pa.s.sed by. His theme was the continuing education of a pest control technician. "When it comes to rodents, I hope all of us can agree, it's a constant learning experience." Everyone nodded his or her head.

"I've been out now for thirty years since I started a pest control route in New York City," he said. By now, some of the pest control operators had stopped taking notes and were just looking up at him in awe. "And I've worked in different environments with the mouse and the rats and whatever you have, and I realize how much we don't know and how much there's still to be discovered."

Bobby Corrigan spoke some more and monitored a panel discussion, but mostly he walked around the room surrounded by pest control technicians, answering hundreds of questions. And each time I approached him, a more aggressive questioner cut me off, so that at the end of his last talk I realized that, even though I'd come all the way from New York to meet Bobby Corrigan, I would go home without spending any one-on-one time with him, though obviously not without more knowledge on the rats of America. It felt unfair, in fact, to take any of Bobby's time away from the many pest control operators who were his longtime fans, his devoted followers. As I was pondering this, I looked over at the notes of the pest control operators sitting on either side of me-one from New Orleans, the other from St. Louis. They had walked away from the long desk to try to speak with Bobby, leaving their notebooks open, their last note-takings exposed. The one on my left said, "I fully agree with Bobby." The other one said, "Bobby was excellent!" The word excellent excellent was underlined several times. was underlined several times.

Chapter 13.

TRAPPING.

SOMETIMES, I CONFESS, as I sat in the alley late that summer and watched a rat emerge, as I studied its now predictable but still surprising path toward food, I felt an odd thrill of wild delight at the notion that I could perhaps myself catch that rat, trap it. It occurred to me that the rat catcher, catcher, spending his time in bas.e.m.e.nts, dilapidated apartments, and alleys, is, in a strange way, a part of the rat's natural environment, more so than the average rat-avoiding citizen. Trapping would provide a means of observing a wild spending his time in bas.e.m.e.nts, dilapidated apartments, and alleys, is, in a strange way, a part of the rat's natural environment, more so than the average rat-avoiding citizen. Trapping would provide a means of observing a wild Rattus norvegicus Rattus norvegicus rat up close. Not that I was anything of a trapper prior to my time in the alley, not that I had ever in my life hunted anything. In fact, I found the whole idea of rat trapping to be alternately exciting and horrific, appealing to both my lower and higher natures-though mostly to my lower, as my wife seemed to intuitively understand. Her first reaction was to utter, "Oh, G.o.d," followed, a short time later, by an admonition, "Just be careful," which I took as sagacious advice, and I also took as meaning that I should trap with a friend. Fis.h.i.+ng is something that appeals to me; I have some experience in holding a rod, if less in bringing anything in. Thus, in ratting, I planned to utilize the catch-and-release method. rat up close. Not that I was anything of a trapper prior to my time in the alley, not that I had ever in my life hunted anything. In fact, I found the whole idea of rat trapping to be alternately exciting and horrific, appealing to both my lower and higher natures-though mostly to my lower, as my wife seemed to intuitively understand. Her first reaction was to utter, "Oh, G.o.d," followed, a short time later, by an admonition, "Just be careful," which I took as sagacious advice, and I also took as meaning that I should trap with a friend. Fis.h.i.+ng is something that appeals to me; I have some experience in holding a rod, if less in bringing anything in. Thus, in ratting, I planned to utilize the catch-and-release method.

I'd spent some time on the telephone with a trap manufacturer discussing hypothetical rat trapping, trying to sound casual; I asked questions such as "If I was going to maybe maybe have to trap rats, for example, what could I have to trap rats, for example, what could I maybe maybe use?" The saleswoman recommended chipmunk traps. Although I didn't say so, I felt that the rats in my alley would not fit in a chipmunk trap, much less get trapped in one. I couldn't decide if it was going to be easy to trap the rat and not necessitate buying a lot of stuff, or if it was even more difficult than I thought and I should buy a use?" The saleswoman recommended chipmunk traps. Although I didn't say so, I felt that the rats in my alley would not fit in a chipmunk trap, much less get trapped in one. I couldn't decide if it was going to be easy to trap the rat and not necessitate buying a lot of stuff, or if it was even more difficult than I thought and I should buy a lot lot of stuff. In the catalog for Tomahawk animal traps, I found a lot of interesting trapping gear, such as Kevlar gloves, Kevlar sleeves, animal control poles, snake tongs and snake graspers, odor eliminators, Tomahawk Dura-Flex nets, telescoping syringe poles, dart guns, and even throw nets, all of which I could imagine being used in rat trapping. The goal would be twofold: (1) get the rat, and (2) stay the h.e.l.l away from the rat. In the end, I bought a trap at my local hardware store. It was a toolbox-size rectangle with a tray in the middle intended to hold bait and a door on one end that dropped shut when the bait tray was disrupted. Manufactured by Havahart, it is designed for what are described as "nuisance animals." The motto on the box is "Caring Control for Small Mammals." of stuff. In the catalog for Tomahawk animal traps, I found a lot of interesting trapping gear, such as Kevlar gloves, Kevlar sleeves, animal control poles, snake tongs and snake graspers, odor eliminators, Tomahawk Dura-Flex nets, telescoping syringe poles, dart guns, and even throw nets, all of which I could imagine being used in rat trapping. The goal would be twofold: (1) get the rat, and (2) stay the h.e.l.l away from the rat. In the end, I bought a trap at my local hardware store. It was a toolbox-size rectangle with a tray in the middle intended to hold bait and a door on one end that dropped shut when the bait tray was disrupted. Manufactured by Havahart, it is designed for what are described as "nuisance animals." The motto on the box is "Caring Control for Small Mammals."

I FELT THE CONFIDENCE OF a cool night's air as I stepped outside with my trap, and after logging so many hours of observations, I felt as if I really knew the lay of the alley's land, as well as the alley's rats-as if trapping a rat was an actual possibility. I had arranged to meet with two friends, the artist and the poet who had been out ratting with me before. Matt, the poet, was going to pick up some bait at a deli on the way to the alley. I was meeting Dave, the artist, on the way there and he would carry my binoculars and notebooks and night-vision gear, while I carried the rat trap.

By 9 o'clock I was on the subway with Dave, carrying the large Havahart trap as well as the rope that I planned to rig to the cage to effect a release from a safe distance. On the way, we ran into an acquaintance, a guy whom we knew from high school who knew nothing of our rat endeavor-a central paradox of life in the city is that in the midst of several million people, each of whom seems to live life in complete anonymity, you can run into someone you know. As we greeted our friend, I moved the trap from my right hand to my left hand so that my right hand would be free to shake his. As I did this, I noticed that the guy looked down at the trap but didn't say anything. Then he looked up and said, "So what are you guys up to?"

I was practically bursting with my answer, of course. "We're going to try and trap rats," I said.

He looked me up and down and nodded hesitantly. Then he looked at Dave and said, "So, Dave, what are you you up to?" up to?"

Dave and I came up out of the subway tunnel downtown, two blocks from the World Trade Center, which was still standing at that point. The weather was cool after a torrential rain, autumnally crisp. Near the alley, we met Matt, who had bought the bait as directed. In choosing the bait, I combined the expertise I had acquired while watching the rats eat garbage for a few months with a knowledge, culled from my rat readings, of foods that they have been reported to prefer-and then I just made some gut choices, so that in the end we ended up with sardines, Vienna sausages, and Kit Kat bars, all stuck together with peanut b.u.t.ter.

We were all excited to begin trapping. Yes, there were some unanswered questions. How would I release the rat after catching it? What would the rat do after I released it? Would the rat turn around and attack? Would we fall dead immediately from one of the many horrible diseases that rats can carry but do not always carry? And what was I thinking again, trying to catch a rat? Where was my self-respect, my instinct for self-preservation?

I was fortunate, however, in that Dave and Matt were a lot more relaxed about the whole operation. Though comforted by my relatively extensive rat knowledge, I am like the rat in the pack that is fine-tuned to smell fear. They encouraged me as I worked. "Put them all all in there," Dave said, while Matt said, "That looks good enough." At last I had the trap set. I was ready. in there," Dave said, while Matt said, "That looks good enough." At last I had the trap set. I was ready.

THE ALLEY WAS ALIVE WITH rats that evening-rats streaking down the walls, from side to side, rats squabbling and screeching, rats eating trash. There were rats feeding on the Chinese-food side and rats feeding on the Irish-bar-food side. Rats were pulling themselves up through the holes in Edens Alley's cobblestones and racing around the corner and coming down the sidewalk. Watching the skitterings and the rat-happy spasms, I saw a nighttime symphony of movement, a chorus of disgustingness. From a rat's perspective, the alley was food-filled, maybe stress-free. I made a mental note to reestimate the population at some point-it seemed to have increased significantly.

With the baited trap in hand, I took a few steps into the alley. Immediately, I turned around and took a few steps back out. Then I collected my thoughts and tried walking into the alley once more, this time with Dave and Matt covering me-it felt good to have some backup, to have visitors in the alley. A few rats quickly scampered off as a result of our presence, but we were still and relatively quiet and many more rats stayed; several of the rats that were deep in the garbage bags continued foraging, as if we weren't even there. The rats who were en route from food to nest or vice versa returned to their nests for a few minutes but then resumed what appeared to be an abbreviated feeding pattern, which was roughly the same pattern only slightly more cautious. The rats seemed to be working around us.

I had some trouble rigging my safety release rope, the jury-rigged affair that I hoped would protect me when and if I caught one of the many rats scurrying around. I was kneeling on the ground in the rat alley, watching for rats around me in a paranoid fas.h.i.+on, and, as a result, spent a lot of time fumbling with my pocketknife. I was getting nervous about the whole thing-worrying about the flow of rats, worrying about jail, about death: rats can sometimes symbolize anxiety, for me, fear of the worst. Matt once again kindly suggested I relax. I looked up at Dave, who was smiling somewhat anxiously. I kept working, eventually choosing to place the trap at the highest part of the alley, a position that seemed to me at once out of view of the pa.s.sersby on the streets and precisely in the course of the rats that were coming from Edens Alley down into the two trash areas to feed. I had seen a healthy amount of rat traffic along the wall, and in placing the trap in this path, I felt like a trained pest control technician, which, of course, I am not.

With my hands smelling like peanut b.u.t.tery sardines (and with a savage urge to try one of the Vienna sausages), I left the alley and felt a surge of satisfaction. We all stood out in the street, near John DeLury Plaza, and looked into the alley with binoculars.

Ah, the excitement, the nail-biting and palpably semiwild thrill of ratting in the city!

The first rat to turn the corner from Edens Alley and head toward the trap elicited positive comments from all of us. We soon found ourselves talking to the rat, encouraging it, saying things like "Come on, rat" and "There you go, rat" and "Do you smell those sardines?" Unfortunately, the rat was extremely tentative; it took a step down the alley, seemed to notice the trap, then paused. As I have already stated, any pest control technician will tell you that rats are neophobic-i.e., fearful of anything new or different in their habitat. Matt and Dave and I watched excitedly as the rat made his decision and, after a few hopeful seconds, lurched and veered around around the trap to head for the river of garbage, which, as a matter of fact, was growing, ever changing, ever the same. the trap to head for the river of garbage, which, as a matter of fact, was growing, ever changing, ever the same.

It was spectacularly unclimactic as the next rat approached and repeated the maneuver, and in retrospect I feel ridiculous even thinking that a rat would choose my bait. This new rat made the same tentative investigation that had previously so tantalized us. And for rat after rat it was again the same: each rat seeming to note the trap, each rat perfectly avoiding the trap. They were proving precisely as wary, as sensitive to newness, as bait-shy, as reputed.

And yet there were so many rats in the alley and there was so much garbage-more bags had come out, more were coming-that I could not believe that not one would take our bait, despite knowing this hardened rat behavioral fact: when faced with a new food source, they will most likely stick with the old food source, until it runs out. Wasn't it possible that they would become acclimated to the presence of the trap in a few hours? Hoping for the best, I moved the trap to the other side of the alley, along the Chinese-restaurant-garbage side, in the midst of the Chinese food garbage. There was even more activity now. One rat seemed to climb up on top of the trap to investigate-or at least I think it did: it was difficult to see in the shadow of the long ridge of garbage bags. Notwithstanding, the result was the same.

In the hours around midnight we were serenaded by screeching cabs and sleepy-sounding garbage trucks, and at some point it occurred to me that rat trapping is not unlike fly-fis.h.i.+ng-finding the perfect place in the streamlike alley and understanding the rats' garbage feeding preferences were both crucial. And as is the case for the fly fisherman when he stands in the cool, clear stream, our own sensory instincts heightened. We saw more clearly the flow of vermin and refuse, and I saw again-so much more so, in fact, that I was wondering how I hadn't noticed it before-that the alley was inclined, a hill. The source of this flow of rats, the stream of rodents, was a completely denuded peak, an alley-covered rise of the land.

IT TURNS OUT THAT LIKE trout, rats are incredibly skittish, wise-seeming, even, and hesitant to take a chance on the extraordinary sardine-juice-covered Vienna-sausage-and-Kit-Kat mix when a field of freshly discarded, partially eaten shrimp fried rice has already proven safe, and appears each night like the regular hatch of stone flies. After an hour or so, several juvenile rats were flirting with the trap, approaching it from the side, but then they too swam off to the plastic bags. The large, wary rats, meanwhile, seemed to grow even more suspicious: they paused, upwind, then stopped and started and finally raced past the trap and into the garbage. We were disappointed. Each time a rat checked out the trap, it still felt to us as if a rat could be trapped, would would be trapped, just as each cast of the fisherman's fly rod brings new hope, fresh antic.i.p.ation, until at last the fisherman becomes convinced that he is standing in the wrong spot or maybe fis.h.i.+ng with the wrong fly. be trapped, just as each cast of the fisherman's fly rod brings new hope, fresh antic.i.p.ation, until at last the fisherman becomes convinced that he is standing in the wrong spot or maybe fis.h.i.+ng with the wrong fly.

So it was that at about one in the morning we collected the trap and broke up for the night. I felt I was close to understanding how to trap a rat, and yet I needed more studying and observing. As it turned out, though, I wouldn't be back down to see the rats in the alley for a while, because later that morning the World Trade Center would be destroyed-I can still remember looking up at the towers as we went down into the subway again. For the next few weeks, all of downtown was evacuated and blocked off.

Chapter 14.

PLAGUE.

ONE REASON THAT rats have a bad reputation is that they have been at the scene of some of humanity's greatest calamities, chiefly as carriers of the plague. Plague is often referred to as bubonic plague because of its symptoms, which include a fever and swelling of the infected person's lymph nodes, or buboes, followed by convulsions, vomiting, giddiness, severe pain, and dark spots on the skin. Death results from heart failure, internal hemorrhaging, or exhaustion. Other versions of plague are pneumonic plague, which is a kind of pneumonia, and septicemic plague, which is plague that invades the bloodstream so quickly that death can occur within twenty-four hours. The plague is also known as the Black Death, though it was not called the Black Death during the Middle Ages when it wiped out as much as 80 percent of the population of most towns and villages. It was first called the Black Death by Scandinavian chroniclers writing in the sixteenth century. Though the plague can cause parts of the body to turn black, when the Scandinavian writers used the term black, black, they used it to mean they used it to mean terrible terrible or or dreadful dreadful or or horrible. horrible.

Plague can live indefinitely in communities of small rodents, such as marmots and gophers and various kinds of rats; rodents are considered the natural reservoir of plague. In fact, plague infects rats and kills them too, so that it could be argued that rats are as much victims of the plague as humans. When rats get the plague, they get it from fleas-most likely, a rat fleasuch as a Xenopsylla cheopis, Xenopsylla cheopis, A rat fleais about the size of this letter A rat fleais about the size of this letter o o and is shaped like a miniature elephant. A flea injects its trunk like proboscis into the rat to suck blood. When a rat flea sucks in rat blood infected with plague bacteria, the plague bacteria multiplies and eventually clogs the guts of the flea; the flea starves to death. In the meantime, before the flea dies, it feeds again and regurgitates the plague bacilli into the next rat as it feeds on the rat's blood. As many as one hundred thousand bacilli can be injected into a rat by a flea, but one plague bacillus could kill an animal as large as a monkey. When the rat dies, the flea senses the temperature change of its host and leaves the body of the cold, dead rat to find a warm, live rat. The flea then infects that rat, which either stays alive and breeds the plague for a time, or dies, causing more fleas to move on to more rats. Rat fleas prefer to feed on rats, and in areas where plague-infected rodents do not regularly come in contact with humans, there may be no human plague epidemics; the disease can live without consequence to man. But because rats live so closely to man, rat fleas will feed on humans (or any warm-blooded mammal) as a kind of second choice. The rat flea can wait a while for a human to appear; it can live for six months without a meal of blood. It can live in old rat nests or in fabric. and is shaped like a miniature elephant. A flea injects its trunk like proboscis into the rat to suck blood. When a rat flea sucks in rat blood infected with plague bacteria, the plague bacteria multiplies and eventually clogs the guts of the flea; the flea starves to death. In the meantime, before the flea dies, it feeds again and regurgitates the plague bacilli into the next rat as it feeds on the rat's blood. As many as one hundred thousand bacilli can be injected into a rat by a flea, but one plague bacillus could kill an animal as large as a monkey. When the rat dies, the flea senses the temperature change of its host and leaves the body of the cold, dead rat to find a warm, live rat. The flea then infects that rat, which either stays alive and breeds the plague for a time, or dies, causing more fleas to move on to more rats. Rat fleas prefer to feed on rats, and in areas where plague-infected rodents do not regularly come in contact with humans, there may be no human plague epidemics; the disease can live without consequence to man. But because rats live so closely to man, rat fleas will feed on humans (or any warm-blooded mammal) as a kind of second choice. The rat flea can wait a while for a human to appear; it can live for six months without a meal of blood. It can live in old rat nests or in fabric.

Plague epidemics begin when plague fleas begin jumping from rats to humans, as the rats die. Epidemics turn into pandemics when the disease spreads through wider areas, like a continent. There is a mention of what historians believe may be a plague epidemic in the Bible, thought to have occurred amongst the Philistines in 1320 B.C. The first plague pandemic swept the Roman Empire in the time of Emperor Justinian; between 25 and 50 percent of the population died. The Black Death of Europe was the second pandemic. It broke out in 1338, the end of a chain of events that may have begun with an infected community of a kind of large marmot, called a tarbagan, that lived on the arid plateau of central Asia in what is now Turkistan-a disease that would nearly wipe out whole cities originated in the most rural part of the world. It is theorized that the nomads who lived in the area were spared plague death because the fleas on the tarbagans were apparently repelled by the smell of the tribe's horses; a balance existed between flea-infected tarbagans and humans. Then something happened to the area that disturbed that balance. Historians speculate about earthquakes, but no one knows for certain. Another change occurring at the time was the building of a road, a great silk-trading route that connected Europe with China. Italians were especially interested in trading for silk, and they set up colonies along the eastern sh.o.r.e of the Black Sea, which was from where people like Marco Polo made their way to China. Along with silk and other trading goods, the traders brought back rats, probably black rats, which preceded Rattus norvegicus Rattus norvegicus into Europe and were migrating along the human routes from Asia. First trading stations grew up along the routes, then towns. Unlike the nomads, the people in the towns became infected with the plague, probably due to infected rats. into Europe and were migrating along the human routes from Asia. First trading stations grew up along the routes, then towns. Unlike the nomads, the people in the towns became infected with the plague, probably due to infected rats.

The plague moved west along the silk route. It traveled with the human settlers and travelers and rats along the Volga Paver; it arrived on the coast of the Black Sea. David Herlihy, the plague scholar, wrote, "To spread widely and quickly, and to take on the proportions of a true pandemic, the plague must cross water. Contact with water ignites its latent power, like oil thrown upon fire." A famous plague story involves a khan of the Golden Horde, a Mongol state conquered and ruled by a grandson of Genghis Khan that got its name from the gleaming tent camp it set up along the Volga River. In 1347, in the Genoese Black Sea trading port of Kaffa, wh