Eeeeeeek! You spotted a shadow that clung to the floorboards as it disappeared down the tiniest of holes near the cabinet – a hole you never noticed, a hole that's practically like a garage. You've noticed that shadow before and basically ignored it, but now you know what it is and that makes you shudder. It explains the scratching in the ceiling and things missing from your pantry.
As in the new book “Stowaway” by Joe Shute, meet your new neighbor. Manchester terriers were bred long ago for one main thing: to kill rats. Shute got to see that in action one night when he went out with a rat hunter and his two dogs, and though Shute didn't get to see the dogs in action, he knew the result.
That's fine for many people who think a dead rat is a good rat. Most folks, in fact, don't have nice things to say about the rodents that steal our food, destroy buildings and cause millions in damage. Rats spray urine, and that's super disgusting.
They carry disease. “Rats,” Shute says, “are like ghost stories: Everybody has one.” His is this: Shute once very much feared rats.
Just the idea of them gave him the heebie-jeebies, but as he began learning more about them and writing this book, he realized that he needed to live with a rat for research purposes. He and his wife brought home a pair of adorable and soon beloved rat pups, Molly and Ermintrude. Rats, Shute says, are extremely fecund.
One breeding pair, according to a journalist in 1813, could result in 3 million young i.
