In the Victorian world divided by class, race, and
nationality, the horror of rats unites all. Their fanged, disease-carrying
bodies cause less fear than the damage and ruination brought by their ravenous
appetites. Armed with experience, courage, the proper tools of the job, and
strong stomachs, Victorian rat-Catchers labored to protect their clients,
homes, business and property from infestations. We’re examining the work of
rat-catchers and how they could be brought to the gaming table, but first we
must first familiarize ourselves with their prey.
Broadly, there are two species of rats in the British
Isles: black rats and brown rats. Black rats arrived in England with the Romans
and are now found all through the countryside, scavenging in barns, fields, and
along river banks. Brown rats, or wharf rats are a foreign species introduced
to the British Isles sometime in the early 1700s. Brown rats are larger than
black rats and will eat practically anything, two traits which help them thrive
in cities, pushing the smaller species out to the country.
Professional rat-catchers further divide rats by
habitat, health, and disposition:
-Barn Rats or Burrow Rats are always black rats caught
in the countryside, and are cleaner and healthier than rats caught in the city.
Their bites tend to heal cleanly with little danger of disease because of their
diet of corn and feed.
-Sewer Rats and Drain Rats are universally brown rats.
Their horrific diet of scavenging in the sewer gives their bites a high chance
of infection and blood poisoning. Even their fur carries disease, leading some
rat-catchers to believe they are poisonous.
-Red Rats feed daily on flesh, such as discarded fat
outside a tannery or scraps stolen from the dead horses fed to dogs kept in
kennels. Their diet gives them a boldness and ferocity greater than other rats.
If a variety of rats inhabit a cage for a night, only the red rats will remain
alive in the morning,
- Some rat-catchers tell stories about “Blood Rats”,
large vicious rats with hairless heads and long fangs, giving them a
“snake-like head”. These strange creatures supposedly steal into
children’s rooms at night and gnaw at their extremities.
As sewers grow more efficient, fetid food sources flow
out before they can be eaten, bringing sewer rats up to the surface. They crawl
up drains and chew through lead pipes to scavenge in homes and warehouses. Rats
nibble fine fabric and soft woods to wear down their teeth, ruining fine
furniture, clothes, and furnishings. In farms, feeds stores, warehouses,
grocers, and kitchens rats eat harvested goods, steal extra to take back to
their nest, and spoil a great quantity more. Rats even kill poultry and steal
eggs by rolling them to their nest, making the vermin a true bane to any
chicken farm.
They thrive in the city, thanks to their
terrific cunning and adaptability. Wherever one rat is spotted, dozens more lie
in hiding. Rats breed quickly with litters of up to 20 pups and can become
pregnant immediately after birth. Some naturalists decry their
extermination, believing a healthy population of rats in the sewers helps
mankind by reducing the amount of decaying waste from which waft “sickening
vapors” carrying plagues up from the drains, but when small piles of scat
sprout up in the pantry, everyone calls the rat-catcher.
Adventure Idea
Each morning a certain anatomist finds that the books,
tools, and chemicals in his dissection room have been moved during the night.
He has taken more precautions to secure the room each day, such as locking the
door, baring the windows and requesting constables to check his home’s exterior
during their rounds. The only openings left are a few pipes the rats chewed
open, but they couldn’t be possibly the culprits.
According to legend, basilisks and cockatrices are
born when a toad or snake sits on a yokeless egg. What happens when a rat
accidentally sits on a stolen chicken egg just before it hatches? A Ratalisk? A
Cockatrat?
Next week we get down to business, by looking at the
work of the Rat-Catcher.
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