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June 29, 2006
Putting the PETA in Petaluma
In terms of the number of innocent human lives they have ended, rats are challenged only by mosquitos and communists as mankind's worst enemy. The instinctive loathing most people have for all three is more than justified. Among their accomplishments, rats spread the Black Death through Europe, killing off nearly half the population. So it is hardly surprising that when an animal shelter in the San Francisco suburb Petaluma was forced to euthanize about 1,000 feral rats, sympathetic moonbats went berserk.
The rats had been hoarded in the home of convicted armed robber Roger Dier, who has been cited for misdemeanor animal cruelty. This real-life Willard first made the news back in the 1960s, when his home was the hideout for two men later convicted of plotting to kidnap the son of Frank Sinatra, leader of the Rat Pack. Nancee Tavares, Petaluma's animal services manager, describes him like this:
He's an intelligent man to talk to, but he smells like rat urine. He told me that when he had only 100 of them, he'd let them sleep with him in his bed. They'd get all in his shorts and stuff. And you can't potty train them, so you know they were urinating and defecating in there.
As for his massive rat collection, Tavares says:
We euthanized all of the adults except the ones we have to keep on quarantine because they bit staff. They weren't social. I would call them feral. We found many with eyeballs missing, teeth growing into the opposite jaw, huge abscesses with open wounds. Some were starving.
The euthanizing outraged local "rat fanciers," who had formed an email chain called "petalumarats" to find homes for the cuddly creatures. They bombarded the animal shelter with angry phone calls and emails.
Self-described rat lover Phyllis Mason raged:
This is an unspeakable injustice to those rats who deserved better.
Fumed rat aficionado Tina Bird:
Maybe they would have been better advised to leave the animals in their horrible conditions until we, the rat community, had a few days to get moving. Be sure that animal lovers across the United States will be scrutinizing Petaluma's actions and culpability for this slaughter.
Just as the judges and pious MSM fools who sympathize with the terrorist barbarians vacationing at Club Gitmo would be unlikely to invite any of the objects of their affection into their own homes, few of the rat activists have been willing to take in rats themselves. As Tavares observes:
Everybody's saying you can't euthanize them and they all say they want to help, but very few can take any.
Some of the horrid creatures actually have been adopted. Others will be traveling all the way to Los Angeles, where they will be put up for adoption by the Rat and Mouse Club of America. Still more will go up for adoption after they have been neutered or checked for pregnancy. All adopters have to be screened to assure they will be suitable parents for the rats. If only aborted humans were offered the same consideration as snake food.
Sometimes you can almost envy moonbats. Imagine what a relief it would be to live in a world where the worst thing you have to worry about is the demise of a rat horde.
Posted by Van Helsing at June 29, 2006 5:08 PM
Comments
The rat folks have a point - the rats shouldn't have been euthanized. They should have been used for lab experiments instead.
I hope nobody finds out about my SkeeterVac in the back yard.
Posted by: Dangerous Dan at June 29, 2006 11:09 PM
Not to challenge the story - rats are evil buggers - but the evidence now is that the plague was spread by people rather than rats. It moved too fast for rats to spread it; it's been estimate that it moved at about human walking pace. The current understanding is that, because it had a long incubation period, people in a village could become infected and then leave becore anyone appeared to get ill. They'd walk over to the next village, infect everyone and then some of them would leave before anyone got ill. That's how it spread so far, so fast. Besides which, rats don't travel across country in the ways necessary to spread it.
Not to say that rats aren't chock-full of diseases. Weils disease, for instance, or hantavirus, (More here) both of which are deadly and only limited because people are so rarely in contact with wild and feral rats. And this is before you even mention rabies...
I wonder what will happen when the first kid gets bitten by on of these rats and drops dead. Who will they sue?
Posted by: Archonix at June 30, 2006 4:59 AM
We, the rat community? lol It almost sounds as if she said that with distinction.
I googled that and I wish I didn't. There are alot of articles looking for homes for rats. It is quite obvious to me how to find nice homes for these wonderful creatures. Please contact the snake community.
Sincerely
TS, the highly exhalted supreme dictator of the maggot, tapeworm, and diaarhea inducing bacteria community.
Posted by: Tomslick at June 30, 2006 10:04 AM
Perhaps the rats should have been sent to the DNC headquarters, where they'd feel right at home.
Posted by: Steve at June 30, 2006 11:58 AM
Even rats have standards.
Posted by: Archonix at June 30, 2006 1:42 PM
