Rats
I guess it was inevitable. Apparently there is a rat plague in areas of Brisbane which were flood-affected in January. These rats are reported to be the size of possums and are fearless. Eek! I'm no fan of wild rats.
It reminds me of my laboratory days many years ago. At that time we worked in the semi-basement of a rather old building that was rather desperate for refurbishment. My supervisor, many years my senior, pointed out to me once the stain on the wall from when an experiment had exploded when he was an honours student back in the sixties.
As the building was not exactly state-of-the-art there were many places for wildlife to get in. There was certainly a lot around. I remember sitting on a low brick wall to eat lunch one day and noticing a possum in the garden behind me. Possums I can handle but wild rats .... a different story.
One night when I was slaving away in the lab I went into the next lab to use some equipment and there, on the lab bench, was the most enormous grey-black, wild rat I have ever seen. I was certainly possum-sized (a very large possum-sized). I told our lab manager and he didn't believe me until he brought in a large rat trap and caught not one, but two of these very large rats.
For a while there we seemed to be rat free until it seemed that some white lab rats had escaped and were breeding in the dark areas of the building. One of my fellow PhD students was working with soybeans and she had a stash in a bucket for experiments. She was off on holiday and didn't bother to put the lid on. I didn't see the rats but just saw their evidence one morning on my bench. The lid was put on!
In each lab we had a trolley with a large bucket of water on it. When we had finished with our glassware we put it in the water to soak until the lab ladies came to wash it up so that we could then sterilise or wash it in chromic acid ready for our experiments. One morning I came into the lab and in one of these buckets was a rat. I had no intention of touching the object so I called for our trusty lab manager. As he lifted the body out of the water he exclaimed, "You look like a drowned rat."
Thankfully, our rodent adventures since my lab days have been limited to mice.
It reminds me of my laboratory days many years ago. At that time we worked in the semi-basement of a rather old building that was rather desperate for refurbishment. My supervisor, many years my senior, pointed out to me once the stain on the wall from when an experiment had exploded when he was an honours student back in the sixties.
As the building was not exactly state-of-the-art there were many places for wildlife to get in. There was certainly a lot around. I remember sitting on a low brick wall to eat lunch one day and noticing a possum in the garden behind me. Possums I can handle but wild rats .... a different story.
One night when I was slaving away in the lab I went into the next lab to use some equipment and there, on the lab bench, was the most enormous grey-black, wild rat I have ever seen. I was certainly possum-sized (a very large possum-sized). I told our lab manager and he didn't believe me until he brought in a large rat trap and caught not one, but two of these very large rats.
For a while there we seemed to be rat free until it seemed that some white lab rats had escaped and were breeding in the dark areas of the building. One of my fellow PhD students was working with soybeans and she had a stash in a bucket for experiments. She was off on holiday and didn't bother to put the lid on. I didn't see the rats but just saw their evidence one morning on my bench. The lid was put on!
In each lab we had a trolley with a large bucket of water on it. When we had finished with our glassware we put it in the water to soak until the lab ladies came to wash it up so that we could then sterilise or wash it in chromic acid ready for our experiments. One morning I came into the lab and in one of these buckets was a rat. I had no intention of touching the object so I called for our trusty lab manager. As he lifted the body out of the water he exclaimed, "You look like a drowned rat."
Thankfully, our rodent adventures since my lab days have been limited to mice.
posted by Mrs Q @ 7:09 PM
2 Comments:
At June 13, 2011 at 11:11 PM ,
Footprints Australia said...
I live in a bayside suburb of Brissie and there is definitely a rat plague at the moment. Our cat has caught one (sometimes two!) rats (sometimes mice) per night. He usually eats them after miaowing to show us, but always leaves the intestines ... uggghhh!
At June 13, 2011 at 11:11 PM ,
Footprints Australia said...
PS forgot to say, for the past 3 or so weeks.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home