Pet Forum / Mammals / Rats / March 2008

I watched this TV programme the other day (on the BBC, I think) presented
by John and Dan Snow. The subject of the programme is pretty obvious, and
it involved Dan Snow trying out various jobs for a day, one of which was
sewer flushing.

What surprised me was that when he was down the sewers and shovelling up
god-only-knows-what, there was a rat in among the 'orrible stuff which
hadn't run off, and when he dug his shovel in and lifted it up, the rat
sat fairly still in among the rubbish on his shovel, not looking
particularly scared.

The really surprising thing, to me, was that although I could only see
its head, I can't see what it could have been other than a black-eyed
himalayan, and from the way it was behaving it was not a wild rat. Also,
I'm not sure, cause I'm not hot on himmy genetics and whether it's a
simple recessive gene or whether it's a careful combination of genes, but
I think that it's probably pretty unlikely that the pattern would show up
in the descendants of an escaped fancy rat.

The question is: Was it an escaped pet rat down that sewer, and if so,
why did they not recognise it and take the thing out of there (I mean,
pet rats are not suited to sewer life, with their genetics and
conditioning - and the authorities treat escaped pet rabbits and cats
different to wild and feral ones, so they shouldn't treat a pet rat like
a wild rat and treat it as a pest to be exterminated)? Or was it a
mocked-up shot done later, in a studio, and they thought it would be a
right laugh to use an obviously fancy rat?

Weird.

Rosemary