Rat City

It had been an unusually warm summer, all summers seemed like that now. The rat trouble started when the garbage men went on strike, causing the whole city to overflow with garbage, rotten food sitting on benches in the sun and bags of trash outside, creating a stench no one could escape. First, the seagulls came swooping in, thicker and more aggressive than ever. Then, the rats came as the Bible once foretold.

The rats poured out from old buildings, thick hedges and up from unsecured manholes and multiplied, one generation bigger and fatter than the other. Children were attacked with snacks in their hand, lovebirds in the park, ran screaming away from their picnics. Shops started to board up their entrances with brooms at their sides.

It was a nightmare and all of the extermination people were on holiday it seemed. Teenage summer interns were crying on public benches, pushed to their limit with killing rats without training.

Letters were sent, opinions were printed in the news. The public were outraged and wanted the rats gone. How could they live like this? Side by side by plague carrying vermin. People lined up outside of doctors, wanting shots for rabies, tuberculosis and other diseases they thought the rats would carry.

Bounties were put on the rats. Fines were given to all those showing a hint to feed the rats. Suddenly, a rush of people wanting to kill rats for money came to town, and suddenly a massacre started. People had wanted blood for a long time, and now, they got the go ahead to kill.

Poison was put in the sewage system, cats sitting fat in window sills. Dogs and owls were sent after them, school children were thought to shoot after them. People running after the army of rats with guns and traps in this ongoing war of who really owned the town.

This is the environment the Rat Man came from. Like a rat himself, he stayed dormant during the day and only came out at night. It started small, as it all had. First it was only a few graffiti messages here and there, telling that the rats must live. Food was put out for the rats on little plates. The traps put up around the city was sabotaged with a spray-painted #FreeTheRats.

His followers grew on his account and people were waiting for his next move. Especially the people from far away who saw this war from afar and condemned the blood hungry citizens.

One day, the city woke up to Rat Man's grand masterpiece. He went viral. During the night, hundreds of little graves had been dug in the little park connecting the main streets. In the little graves little wooden crosses peeked up. On the sign to the park it was tagged Rat Cemetery. People flocked to the town square. News outlets interviewed the people getting emotional. The little graves for the little creatures laid out visually for everyone to see.

They were all accompanied by little drawings of the little creatures, their eyes bigger and glossier than on the city council's warning posters. Painted in the style of Beatrice Potter, it showed the rat families smiling next to images taken around town of the massacred ones. The ones trapped or chased down by the bloodthirsty rat hunters.

This changed everything and a new type of movement grew from it. The rats that people called to exterminate got a rebranding as cute little animals that were slaughtered by monsters, the humans. Suddenly, everyone wanted to save the rats. The people were turning against themselves.

The vegans and environmentalists came out from their dumpster diving and weed smelling circles in the parks. Groups of people not wearing deodorant gathered outside the city hall, raising their banners.

The bird ladies joined the protesting Vegans from the organic coffee shops. They spent their time feeding the birds in the park, train station and those nesting on the rooftop of the library. They all had this thousand miles away stare as they lectured to anyone they met in supermarkets, sitting on benches and random city council meetings. They helped spread the word to everyone, like apostles to their prophet.

Philosophers from the universities joined the conversation, talking about the cosmos and how humans were not the center at all. How morality shifted to our needs and wants. But what about the rats? What did they want? Surely not death? Did we as humans really want them dead?

The Rat Man grew on social media, soon, he was the biggest influencer in town. Receiving sponsors and thanking his partners as he advertised for a certain spray paint, or a fashionable and breathable balaclava. Soon the Rat Man posted from far away places, Alberta in Canada and New Zealand mainly. Rumor was that these were places that were rat free.

Meanwhile, the Rat City continued to go on. The bird ladies kept singing their hymns in the parks about the coming of the rats as they fed the birds, the bees and those wanting a dry piece of bread. Soon it would be winter.

Vegans sat inside of their plastic free coffee shops and discussed the value of all lives sipping matcha with the academics. The rat holes were cemented shut and the doors and windows barricaded, they were with the rats in spirit.

On the ground, the furry new mascots of the town went about their day. They went through trash outside the bus stations, they even dug through the leftovers from the gluten free bakeries from the vegans. The little park where all the little graves of the rats had been dug out as a mausoleum as well as an eye opening gallery were soon overgrown. Winter buried the cemetery in a layer of frozen water, and by spring, there was not much left. The first lawn mowing took down the rest, and the rats kept lingering in the nightly shadows of the city.