Rats have a special place in literature. If there is an aftermath of any horror, nuclear bomb, disease or disaster, you can always call on the rats to add even more terror to the most horrendous of situations. Most notably, Bram Stoker , James Herbert and my personal favourite George Orwell in ‘1984’. I am with Winston – rats would be in Room 101 with me. I find them repulsive. I struggle to find anything endearing about them. Where I claim to have very few phobias, rats are top of my list.
Language, Gender and Power
The rat in the bath refers to a particular incident I shared with my A Level English Language class at he time, I did link this to gender and power and gender and language. The context was a post feminist link it to both how we use language and how this links to power and the pursuit of equality in modern relationships. The class were all aware that as a family we had the misfortune of having to leave our family home due a flood, and that we were all squashed into a country cottage next to a river. Informing the class of my adventures with rats was a necessary coping mechanism during a difficult time.
The Rat in the Bath
We had had a particular dry weather spell, and as a consequence of this we discovered that rats travel up the toilets! They enter residential homes to hunt for the food they are struggling to find in the wild. One night, my daughter came into my bedroom and – very matter of fact and calmly – stated ‘Mammy, there is a rat in the bath.’ Without giving it too much thought I went into the bathroom to take a look. Low and behold there was a very large disgusting, horrific looking rat and it was clawing its way up the slope of the bath and then skidding back down. Luckily, it could not get enough of a grip to escape. The piercing scratching noises brought terrible memories of poor old Winston.
My own personal nightmare was now a reality. I wanted to scream and run, but I did not want to transfer my fear onto my young daughter. As a proud mother I should feel an inner glow that my daughter feels I am the chosen parent to deal with such an incident, but I didn’t. In addition, my repeatedly vocal claims for decades of women and equality and how we are as good, if not better, than men all went swiftly out of the window. This is where being a pathetic woman becomes a bonus. As far as I am concerned, getting a rat out of the bath is a man’s job.
A Job for a Man
With a tiny amount of guilt, I went to tell my husband the good news – it was his job to get rid of the rat. My personal role was my motherly duty of comforting our 6 year old – admittedly not particularly traumatised- daughter. Anna and I lay in her room laughing to ourselves as my husband began his hour long conversation with the big hairy rat in the bath. As all modern men do these days, he consulted with Google about how to get rid of rats out of baths. After considering a variety of solutions, he decided to get a towel, scoop it up tightly and go to the banks of the river with his bag of swag and fling the creature into the river. He couldn’t look it in the eye and kill it. He had to do the most humane thing.
Our modern day Pied Pier was most proud of his rat catching. He even declared that he was going to keep the towel as his ‘rat catching equipment’ in case we got another rat. “Were there any more rats?” I hear you ask – well, yes! They were running up the cavity wall. They were running across the carpet as we watched TV – laughing in our faces. It most definitely became a party house for rats. We got the official rat catcher to lay some traps, there was no option, we were on the verge of our very own series of ‘I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here’!
Long Term Effects
Ultimately, it is the knowledge that rats crawl up the toilet to get into the house that has left me mentally scarred. Top tip – washing up liquid needs to be squirted down to ensure they slip back down. Nevertheless, I could never quite cope with the possibility of rats jumping out of the toilet. The very thought of it makes me shiver. Luckily, we only had another week left of our 8 month stay in what we still affectionately call ‘The Rat House’. No matter how far we feel women have come, I must confess, I have sold my soul to the feminist devil and conceded that getting a rat of the bath is most definitely a job for a man.
A Special Invite
It transpired that my story of the rat had a long term impact on my A Level class. As I glanced through the list of students attending our end of year night out, I was amused to see that The Rat in The Bath had received a very special invitation to attend. He had been given pride of place on the list. He declined, he was too bust that night. What it also shows that sometimes it is the anecdotes and teachers sharing some information about their own lives can often make the biggest impression on the students. Everyone loves a great story about rats.