Althouse: It's so easy for a rat to climb-swim up into your toilet.

August 19, 2015

It's so easy for a rat to climb-swim up into your toilet.

36 comments:

hoyden said...: They come in through the TV also.; 8/19/15, 4:19 PM
Bob Ellison said...: That explains Congress.; 8/19/15, 4:29 PM
khesanh0802 said...: If nothing else this proves that Ann's blogging subjects are as eclectic as anyone could hope for.; 8/19/15, 4:31 PM
JAORE said...: Well THAT will help me drift off peacefully tonight.; 8/19/15, 4:34 PM
Nichevo said...: Back in my rat loft in Brooklyn, I caught mice, then, sadly, rats, in glue traps, then I would peel them off the glue with barbecue tongs and flush them down the toilet. I'm not sure whether I believed they might survive or not. I felt sure they would be disinclined to return.; 8/19/15, 4:39 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: The takeaway from this? Do NOT store rats in your toilet. They may escape.; 8/19/15, 4:43 PM
JCC said...: I could have gone a long way without reading this. Now I'm trying to unread it...; 8/19/15, 4:50 PM
Leigh said...: Just glad I'd finished my dinner before watching. Now I'm off to put a brick on the toilet lid.; 8/19/15, 4:59 PM
Birdwatcher said...: Reminds me of ISIS.; 8/19/15, 5:24 PM
phantommut said...: Oh god I hope my wife doesn't see this.; 8/19/15, 5:25 PM
YoungHegelian said...: I blame Bush.; 8/19/15, 5:31 PM
Wilbur said...: My house and I were born the same year 1954. That's reasonably old (for both of us) for South Florida.

Several years ago, I heard scurrying sounds in the attic above the family room, a converted garage. So I looked up some critter-removal company in the Yellow Pages. They said they'd be over the next day, quoting a very reasonable price.

They came out and explained they would seal all of the entrance and exit holes house-wide, and set traps in the attic. All for about $65.

Cool. Then he said it's $200 per varmint for removal. Do it, I said.

They did an excellent job, sealing and trapping. Wilbur got the rats out himself. You know when they're dead when you smell 'em.; 8/19/15, 5:41 PM
sinz52 said...: Domesticated ("fancy") rats make excellent pets for apartments. They require very little space, and as the video shows, they are highly inquisitive and curious enough to try anything.

One thing the video didn't show is that rats are social animals. They like to be with their own kind. So if you get a pet rat, get a second rat of the opposite sex too. They will be more comfortable that way.

http://www.nfrs.org/shortinfo.html

So if your home doesn't have any rats, maybe it should!; 8/19/15, 6:09 PM
mezzrow said...: How very special.; 8/19/15, 6:25 PM
Sam L. said...: One thing--do NOT, under any circumstances, shoot at the rat.; 8/19/15, 6:46 PM
Nichevo said...: Sinz52, I know you are a silly bint, but you've never heard the expression, breed like rats? I look forward to your reaction to the third litter in ninety days...

A female rat can mate as many as 500 times with various males during a six-hour period of receptivity—a state she experiences about 15 times per year. Thus a pair of brown rats can produce as many as 2,000 descendants in a year if left to breed unchecked. (A rat matures sexually at age three to four months.) An average rat's life span is two to three years.; 8/19/15, 6:48 PM
Nichevo said...: Sam, huh?; 8/19/15, 6:48 PM
jono39 said...: Treading water for three days? Meh. We have been treading water for decades and show little sign of giving it up.; 8/19/15, 7:44 PM
Laslo Spatula said...: I tried, but I do not find this erotic.

I am Laslo.; 8/19/15, 7:55 PM
Nichevo said...: I offer the thanks of a grateful nation, Laslo.

You are Laslo.; 8/19/15, 8:00 PM
Bobber Fleck said...: Now I understand why Debbie Wasserman-Schultz's hair always looks wet.; 8/19/15, 8:30 PM
jr565 said...: There;s a rat in me toilet what I'm a gonna do
there's a rat in me toilet what I'm a gonna do
I'm gonna beat that rat that's what I'm gonna do
Im gonna beat that rat.; 8/19/15, 8:38 PM
Hagar said...: But not necessarily that easy to get up the SAS service to the toilet.

Cockroaches now, they can do that easy, though they probably will do the shower or tub drain rather than the toilet. Especially if you have not showered or bathed there for some time in the summer.; 8/19/15, 8:44 PM
Fritz said...: I went up to go to bed two nights ago and there was a bat flying around. I think it snuck in from the attic through a small hole where a smoke detector was dangling. I trapped it in an unused bedroom overnight, then opened the windows in that room the next day, and left them open all night. I sure hope it found the way out.; 8/19/15, 9:16 PM
sojerofgod said...: This is yet another reason in the long line of those that explain WHY I DON'T LIVE IN THE FRICKIN CITY!!!

A rat wants to swim up my toilet he gotta dig down to the septic tank first. No rats, no rats for me momma!

Now a gopher on the other hand however, hmmmm.

But unlike a rat, a gopher got no reason to swim.; 8/19/15, 9:21 PM
tim in vermont said...: I tried, but I do not find this erotic. - Laslo Spatula

Richard Gere probably would!*

*There is an urban legend that this is an urban legend. (Hey, I could write for Family Guy!); 8/19/15, 9:54 PM
MikeR said...: We used to have a pet rat. Benjamin was very friendly and used to curl up in our laps. Mostly he lived in his cage in the living room, but sometimes he would get out. If the doors to the room were closed, we'd let him run around; he wouldn't make a mess.
So I was sitting in the living room reading or something, and I hear this distant splashing kind of sound. Didn't think much of it for a while. Then I said, Naw, can't be. Then I sighed, pulled myself out of the couch and walked to the bathroom.
And there was Benjamin, trying to jump out of the toilet. Falling back in, splashing around, sinking, jumping.
It was hard to get him out, as he wouldn't hold still. Finally I managed to get my hands under him and threw him and a bunch of water right across the room and against the wall.
It took a long time to catch Benjamin and calm him down.; 8/19/15, 9:56 PM
Fritz said...: Wouldn't it have been easier to just drape a towel in there?; 8/19/15, 10:15 PM
MikeR said...: That's a good idea! But I was kind of hurried.; 8/19/15, 10:17 PM
Nichevo said...: Three days, remember.; 8/19/15, 11:08 PM
Donna B. said...: sojerofgod -- let me tell you about the time that a rat somehow got through my Mom's septic tank and into her toilet. Let me tell you that I was the one who just got up off that toilet and saw him. First thing I did was call my brother, the lawyer, who said (in a very lawyerly voice) "what do you want me to do about it?"

I replied in a very sisterly voice "I want you to kill it and I want you to do it RIGHT NOW!"

Brothers know that voice. Lawyers... not so sure.

He arrived quickly and assured both me and my mother that the rat was dead. My mother, in her most motherly voice, told him that he'd best be assuring her of that as her son and not as her lawyer.; 8/20/15, 1:09 AM
MathMom said...: I will be really happy when this picture isn't the first thing I see at Althouse.

Gah.; 8/20/15, 6:51 AM
Hagar said...: Do not lawyers owe professional courtesy to rats?; 8/20/15, 7:32 AM
Douglas B. Levene said...: I was totally freaked out when I found a dead squirrel in the toilet in my old house in Wilton, Connecticut. Still not sure how it got there - the house was on a septic system and I can't figure out what the point of entry was.; 8/20/15, 8:17 AM
Mark Caplan said...: The simpler and more likely explanation is the rat walked into the bathroom and climbed or jumped into the toilet bowl. Case (or lid) closed.; 8/20/15, 10:42 AM
mikee said...: Rats are one thing. In Texas I learned that the gigantic cockroaches of the Pleistocene Era still lived among us, and could appear any morning in a sink, a bathtub, or the toilet bowl by swimming upstream from their lairs in the netherworlds of the sewage system. Which to this day, decades later, has me flushing before I sit.; 8/20/15, 10:50 AM