Rats! ‘Why’d it have to be [Rats]?’

As recent news reports from several sources make clear--and among its many other problems--the country of my birth is dealing with a widespread rat infestation (of the four-legged sort). The poster child for this terrible plague is my native Birmingham, which is enduring the sixth (or eighth, depending on who's counting) month of an all-out strike by bin workers (garbage collectors).

The photos, which can be found all over the Internet, are appalling. Heartbreaking, even, if you've any sort of memories of, or emotional investment in, the place.

To be clear, over past decades, I've found many British cities to be filthy, with overflowing public refuse bins that are rarely emptied, and trash everywhere. But the recent strikes have included residential pickups with--apparently--no accommodation being made as to what residents are to do as their trash piles up, week after week, month after month.

The Telegraph posted an article yesterday on Martin Kirkbride, a 21st-century rat catcher in Northwest England (this isn't Birmingham) who, along with his two terriers (Issy and Cilla), is waging war on the rodents:

Over recent weeks, Kirkbride has been dealing with rodent infestations in car showrooms, ambulance bays, industrial units and people’s houses. A fortnight ago, he was also called out to a sprawling stately home with ornate four-poster beds, a suit of armour on the stairs and a family of rats living in the larder.

During the course of the article, its author accompanies Kirkbride on a "ratting" expedition to a student district in Manchester

bordered by a disused railway line and cobbled alleyway filled with dumped mattresses and overflowing communal bins...a rat paradise.

I could feel myself getting a bit twitchy as Kirkbride described most of his haul (rats measuring around twelve inches), and the author mentioned the largest rat captured in England this year, a twenty-two-inch monster rounded up in a house in Teeside.

I don't think Britain's alone in this trend, although it may be leading the Rat Pack (ouch). The article also mentions that rat sightings in Washington, DC are up 390% this year (no mention of how close the observer was to Capitol Hill), and that New York City has hired a "Rat Tsar" to deal with its burgeoning population.

But it seems clear that the situation in Britain is pretty dire.

All this reminded me of a post from many years ago, a story about an old-time rat catcher, the Pied Piper of Hamelin, one of my least-favorite bits of childhood literature...

a story so redolent of evil with overtones of perversity that I pretty much deep-sixed it to the memory hole.

If you’re not familiar with the story (parts of which date back to the thirteenth century), it goes like this: A young man dressed in patched and multicolored (“pied”) clothing appeared in the German town of Hamelin, very opportunely one day, and offered to rid the town of the infestation of rats that was plaguing it.

Anxious to solve an unhealthful and expensive problem, the local burghers were eager to contract for his services, promising him a handsome reward, should he be successful in his endeavors.

The piper (for such he was) removed his instrument from his pocket, played a merry tune on it, and led the rats to the Weser River, where all but one of them drowned.

At which point, the worthy burghers defaulted on their promise of payment, accused the piper of extortion by bringing the rats to the town in the first place, and sent him, penniless, packing.

A few weeks later (the legend in Hamelin has this happening on June 26), the piper showed up in the town again dressed all in green (red in some versions) while all the adults were in church, and played a tune of such sweetness on his pipe that all the local children were enchanted to follow him into a cave whose entrance closed up after them, and they were never seen again. Remaining behind were only three children, one of whom was lame, one deaf, and one blind, to tell the sad story to the bereft parents when they emerged from church.

Several variations of the story exist, especially on the theme of what happened to the children, with the most popular being that they were escorted to a paradisial setting and lived happily ever after, that they were led into the River Weser and drowned just like the rats, that they were returned to the bosom of their grieving parents after the town paid the piper several times the promised original amount, and that they formed a settlement in Transylvania.

I always loathed the story, whether reading it in a book of childhood fairy tales from the aptly-named Brothers Grimm, struggling through the original German of Goethe’s poem in school, or rounding out my understanding of Robert Browning in what passes for him, as an attempt at light verse. There’s just nothing nice about it. The adults are duplicitous and greedy. The piper is cruel and vindictive. The children are two-dimensional pawns. And by the end of it, I’m even feeling sorry for the rats.

Time, perspective, and additional information have altered, or at least broadened my view a bit. It’s apparent that something cataclysmic and tragic must have happened in Hamelin, starting with records describing the church window from about 1300, about which was written in 1384, “it is 100 years since our children left.” Other theories, some with legs, some pure speculation, center on an epidemic of plague-like illness, a mass drowning, an enforced emigration (deportation) by the feudal lord of dozens of his vassals, and a landslide that killed hundreds. We’ll never really know.

Ugh. I may have to give up reading the Telegraph if they don't knock it off with articles on rat catchers, repeated stories about unrecognizable trans-national soccer players with no real connection to their teams, and reports detailing the latest Meghan Markle dried-flower-sprinkled culinary effusions.

And just retreat to my several favorite series of cozy British mysteries from the 1980s or so, with not a rat in sight.

Just a much more tasteful and relaxing murder every five or ten minutes.