Rats among us

Heavy continuous rain this week has resulted in flooding that brings water and mud into low-lying homes. I am afraid to even imagine what else comes with the floodwaters: snakes, rats, germs, and disease.

I’ve been eye to eye with a live rat in Chinese restaurants. First time was in an upscale Makati restaurant where the rat made an appearance on a ledge behind our elegant hostess. Not only was this rat fat, it was obviously fed with good food as its fur was shiny and lustrous. Second time was in an Ermita restaurant, where a rat generated shrieks and caused panic in the dining room. A waiter came out with a broom and after shooing the rodent away, declared triumphantly: “Ok na po, tinaboy ko na po sa kusina ang daga!” (It’s all right folks, I drove that rat into the kitchen!) Needless to say, I paid the bill without finishing my meal. I didn’t take out the leftovers either.

Southeast Asian newspapers from the 1920s to the 1930s had many articles on rats. Everywhere from Manila to Saigon, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Bangkok, and Jakarta, the papers carried news of anti-rat campaigns driven by fear of the bubonic plague. This was the 14th-century “Black Death” that I learned about in school. Until I read prewar Asian papers, I didn’t know that it reached our shores in the early 20th century.

The disease was caused and spread by the bite of infected fleas that were carried worldwide by rats. As a port city, Manila under United States occupation subjected ships to stringent sanitary inspection before they were allowed to dock. Stowaway rats disembarked with people and cargo on gangplanks and crawled on the ropes and cables that attached ships to the pier. In the port of Manila, piers were constructed with concrete and, in some areas, were lined with rat guards or steel sheets that made rats getting off ships slide down to the water where they, hopefully, drowned together with their hitchhiking fleas.

Rats were also a serious threat to agriculture, such that after solving a problem with locusts in 1917, the Bureau of Agriculture trained their guns on rat infestation using gelatine traps, two types of spring traps, and homemade traps devised from used petroleum cans. The rats invaded fields in Taytay, Cainta, Binangonan, Morong, Santa Ines, Lubang, and some towns in Pampanga, Tarlac, Abra, Ambos Camarines, Capiz, and Marinduque.

Of the four types of rats identified, the most destructive were the large gray ones found all over the islands. Two species of rats were previously unknown to science so specimens were sent to scientists and museums abroad.

I have yet to find the how-to guide printed and distributed to the public by the Bureau of Agriculture on how to trap or exterminate rats. The poison of choice was arsenic, then fumigation with carbon disulfide. The bureau recommended the use of arsenic, mixed dry with either boiled rice, mashed camote, or shredded coconut that were three times the poison’s weight, then evenly stirred and distributed for maximum effect.

At first glance I thought some of the recipes were for merienda: “… split a ripe banana, boiled camote, or section of sugar cane and on the split surfaces sprinkle a quantity of the poison, after which the halves should be pressed together as formerly. Place these articles singly about the fields where the rats are present … use bait unlike food obtainable in the infested fields: thus, use the rice or cane in a camote patch, the banana or camote in a rice field, etc. Place the baits without poison for several nights to accustom the rodents to the presence of the same, omit the process one night, and the following evening place the poisoned article.” Warning was made to make sure the poison did not kill domestic animals or humans.

In 1913, the Supreme Court acquitted Maria Paras of the attempted murder conviction passed by a lower court. In 1911, a nurse employed by Paras testified that she was given a packet of arsenic and instructed to mix it with (Paras’) husband’s breakfast chocolate. Nurse did not comply and reported it to the police, leading to Paras’ conviction. But the nurse was later discredited since the arsenic was to be used against rats, not the husband.

I presumed that rats caught in traps were either drowned or burned. The Bureau of Agriculture recommended “exposing the rats to be killed by clubs or dogs.” Nowhere in the papers did I see cats proposed as a solution to the problem.

To keep rats off coconut trees, a 25-centimeter strip of tin was placed around the trunk. Tin was replaced when it rusted because then it would have enough traction for the rats to claw their way up the tree.

Rat campaigns provided alternative employment in the Philippines. It was so lucrative that someone harvested many tails from a Tondo rat farm. In 1906, Filipinos were paid 50 cents for every rat presented for extermination. In Vietnam, the reward offered in 1927 was 50 centimes for every 100 rat tails presented.

Bubonic plague may be a thing of the past, but rats remain amongst us, their urine causing a new scourge in floodwaters called leptospirosis.

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Comments are welcome at aocampo@ateneo.edu