The Twilight of humans in Cal Anderson Park
The twilight of humans in Cal Anderson Park. Charles Mudede

During the age of the dinosaurs (Mesozoic Era), mammals came out only at night. That was the safest time. The dinosaurs were too much for the warm-blooded furry kind. Those beasts ruled the world for 110 million years. Then a large asteroid or comet about the size of downtown Seattle hit what is now the Gulf of Mexico, and that was end of that monstrous way of life. When the dust cleared, the small creatures eventually came out of the night. Some of these furry rodent-sized animals evolved into monkeys, and then into apes. Some of these apes became humans. And what have we done over the past 100,000 years of our dominance? We have pushed a number of rhinos out of existence and rats into the night. That is the rats' domain. It's also that of raccoons. We are the new monsters. It is the business of the rat's mode of life to be in perpetual fear of us. We will kill them at any opportunity.

But what is happening in Seattle at the end of the second decade of the 21st century (an epoch called the Anthropocene because of capitalism)? We are seeing rats that have become totally fearless. They come out during the day and go about as if they are squirrels or birds. They are also becoming huge, which is another indication of growing fearlessness. The idea was once to keep small and out of our sight. But just look at this big Leschi rat eating a tomato, and you will see things are really changing.

This rat has no idea that it is a rat. It is, as you can see, eating the Leschian's fruit as if it has every right to. The sun is out. It can be seen by human eyes. But there is no rush in this rat. It eats with something we humans can easily identify as delight. It is taking its own sweet time. This bite needs be enjoyed before taking another bite. Can you imagine a small mammal doing this during the age of the dinosaurs? Not at all. But it is happening in Seattle. We have rats that no longer know they are what they are.

Yesterday, after seeing a huge dead rat on sidewalk next to Cal Anderson Park, I saw another huge rat just hanging out near the park's restrooms. Its casual attitude spooked me. Why are these rats so big? And why don't they care about humans anymore?


And now they're showing up in our toilet bowls.

In 2007, I wrote a piece that provided a philosophy for the natural relationship between rats and humans. I will close this troubling post with my important philosophical work, which was inspired by the movie Ratatouille:

The entire meaning of the struggle between humans and rats is this: We produce and store food, and they, the rats, want to eat the food we produce and store.

1. The Rat and Human Problem
Remove the food, and you end the struggle. As the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze pointed out in his book What Is Philosophy, life, no matter what form it takes, is determined by a problem: The bird form has the problem of worms, the giraffe from has the problem of leaves, the bee form has the problem of flowers, the cow form has the problem of grass. These are their problems. Because the rat’s problem happens to be our food, rats themselves present us with a problem. There is no other reason why rats live in our cities, race onto our ships, raid our garbage cans, and, worst of all, invade our homes—they are working on their problem, which is our food.

2. A Rat in the Kitchen
The lyrics of a popular song by the British reggae band UB40:

There’s a rat in me kitchen/what am I gonna do?
There’s a rat in me kitchen/what am I gonna do?
I’m gonna fix that rat that/what I’m gonna do…
I’m gonna fix that rat
You invade my space
Make me feel disgraced
And you just don’t give a damn
If I had my way…
I’d like to see you hang…

3. Clean God
For humans, cleanliness is next to Godliness, and the furthest thing from cleanliness, as far as we are concerned, is a rat. Therefore, a rat is the furthest thing from what humans aspire to be: God.

4. The Greatness of Ratatouille
We know that rats have nothing else on their mind than getting at our food. We know they are filthy little creatures. If we see a dead squirrel, we first feel consternation and then concern; a dead bird, even a raven, makes us sad. But a dead rat makes us happy. The only kind of rat we like to see is a dead one. The worst kind of rat we can ever see is one in our kitchen. A rat in the kitchen represents, in the immemorial struggle between humans and rats, the front line—the final area of combat. This is why Ratatouille is such a great movie. It is nothing less than bold to make a comedy about a rat in a kitchen, a rat in the space that defines the long war between the natural enemies.

5. The Story of Ratatouille
The story is about a tribe of rats that is forced to flee a country home and settle in the city of Paris. One rat in this tribe, Remy, has a strange passion, a dangerous passion, a mad passion, a passion for fine foods. He not only likes to eat good cheeses, rare mushrooms, spices from islands in the Indian Ocean, he also loves to cook. And, to make matters more bizarre, he has a knack for cooking. Remy the rat has a gift for preparing human foods. He doesn’t want to steal food from a kitchen; he wants to cook and serve it to humans. Impossible! Yet the film works. It not only works, it also makes us laugh like there’s no tomorrow. A rat that wants to cook fine foods! Because there is nothing more ridiculous than that idea, that image (a rat stirring a stew), there is nothing more hilarious than Ratatouille.

6. Remy the Great Self-hater
Because Remy the rat loves humans, loves their religion of cleanliness, their sensitivity to beauty, their ability to prepare exquisite dishes—because he loves the things that humans most love about themselves, he hates what he is, a rat. And because he hates rats, he hates himself. What he wants to be is what hates him the most: a human being. And a rat that loves humans (the lover’s of God’s cleanliness) is a rat that hates itself in the most radical way. This is the movie’s dark conclusion: Remy is only lovable because he does not love himself.

7. Passing a building near the corner of Commercial Drive and Main in Vancouver, BC
My lover: See across the street. Two good restaurants right next to each other.
Me: But look what is above them?
My lover: Yes, apartments.
Me: I would hate to live in those apartments.
My lover: Why?
Me: Rats! The place has to be infested with rats. All of the food in storage, in the garbage in the back. The rats can’t help it. They must get inside, get to the food.