# Slander And Defamation Of Character



## Holly (Dec 31, 2006)

In case the title didn't give it away, I'm a little (well, a lot) P.O.'d about something. I'll elaborate, and maybe you can think of something to do.

Maybe you have heard of the USA-based company, "Orkin." They are a "pest-control" service, and, up until last night, I thought that they meant bugs. (All previous commercials have shown bugs to represent "pests.") But last night, I saw a new commercial, which FLAT OUTRIGHT LIES!

They had bugs, as per the usual, but they also added something to the beginning and end of the commercial. Same visual shot, and same words being spoken in the voice-over, both at the start and end of the commercial.

Orkin is, of course, trying to give you reasons to hire them.

The shot (used twice) in question shows two lovely, brown (colored) rats, not even as large as my Augustus, crawling around on top of an OPEN trash can full of goodies. The spoken words are, "Pests can carry disease," or at least, that's the upshot of it.

So, I saw this ad for the first time last night, and I'm talking to my TV: 
"That's a bald-faced lie! This is not the truth! You can't advertise this!" (The TV had no comment at the time.)

OK, not that this is really my point, but first of all, ~anyone~ who leaves an OPEN trash can (no lid) full of "goodies" outside is bound to attract all kinds of "pests." If you're not smart enough to Put The Lid On, not only will rats and mice show up, but so will raccoons, possums, skunks, wild cats, and whomever else is roaming around that is interested in, well, a large container of "dinner."

#1. Put a lid, or better, a locking lid, on your outside trash can.

The BIG deal, though, is that they are lying! I've read a lot of books and internet articles, and had many conversations with vets, and everyone says that _rats do not pass diseases on to humans!_

There is ~one~ very rare disease that you can get from a rat, called "Rat Scratch Fever," but it's so rare that people don't even usually talk about it. (If you get it from a cat, it's called "cat scratch fever.") NOTHING else.

Just to make sure, I called up my vet today, to do a double-check. I told her that the rats in question were wild, not pets, and asked about diseases. She said that "rat diseases" stay in the "rat communities," and get passed from rat to rat. They do NOT carry rabies, or any of the other popular "mammal" illnesses. Everybody likes to bring up the Bubonic Plague, and blame it on the rats, but actually, again, _the rats cannot transfer the Plague to humans._ The plague was spread by fleas who lived on the rats, and then jumped onto the humans.

After a long discussion with my vet, who said, and I quote, "I've been in business for 21 years, and have never even heard of this kind of problem," we concluded that the worst that could possibly happen is that you might get bitten by a wild rat, and, if you didn't take care of the bite, you could get an infection. (Of course, the rat would prefer to run, and ANY bite should be checked out so it doesn't get infected.)

So...let's go back to our two brown "rat pests" crawling around in the garbage can. "Pests can spread disease."

2. WRONG. "Pests," like, say, mosquitos, can spread disease. However, RATS, which was what was being shown on the screen, can NOT spread disease to humans.

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Here is a worst-case scenario regarding Mr. and Mrs. "Pest Rat:"

Someone stupid leaves a garbage can full of food open, which the rats find. After awhile, they figure out that the food comes from the HOUSE - so they try to get into the house, to find more food. If they succeed in entering the house, and are in a cabinet when a human doesn't know it, the human might reach for something, and the rat might feel trapped, and bite.

That's all. That's it. The whole thing.

(Well, I suppose it could get worse...they could have babies. But this is not a problem...just trap them in a "humane" trap, and release the family out in a field, together.)

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Orkin is, more or less saying, "We have to kill these things because they're dangerous."

But the truth is, they're not. Are we killing dogs, cats, and other mammals because they might bite, and our bite might get infected? This is ridiculous!

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The last time I checked, it's ~illegal~ in the USA to make false claims in an ad.

I would like to sue Orkin for Slander, and Defamation of Character, but I can see where this is going; if I were a judge, I'd throw the case out, because ~only the rats being slandered~ can sue, and...I'm not one.

I DO intend to call a lot, and make a general "pest" (hee hee) of myself, but I doubt that I'll get anywhere. I'll wind up talking to people who have no power over the commercials.

So, I really don't know what to do. (If anyone else here wants to call Orkin and "bug" them along with me, I wouldn't mind.  )

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If what Orkin is doing is legal, then it would also be legal for me to buy commercial air-time, and tell people how much weight they can lose eating only chocolate and potato chips!

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Friends, now that I'm mad, what do I do next?


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## Chivahn (Mar 30, 2007)

The only disease I've ever known of rats to carry to humans (besides the old school plague, heh) was Hantavirus (my neighbor growing up was the first person in the state to die of it. WOO!) and that is very, very rare.

But I think that you should make a fuss. ****, I'll make a fuss too. I've got nothing better to do with my time today, haha.


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## Holly (Dec 31, 2006)

As soon as I track down the right people to bother, I'll post the number here. 

For now, I'm going with 1-888-ORKINMAN, but that's just their general line.


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## Holly (Dec 31, 2006)

Just talked to an operator at "ORKINMAN," and even though it's after hours and they're only supposed to deal with medical emergencies, he spent awhile talking to me.

He asked what I saw on the commercial, and, as it turns out, he ~agrees~ with me. He said that he used to live in Florida, and a little mouse got into his work, and so he fed the mouse, which kind of became a "mascot." The operator's nickname was "Grizzly Adams."

We also talked about feeding the natural wildlife, which both he and I do, and he said that I should put some salt blocks around, for the outdoor "kids."

I'm sure that, if it were up to "Grizzly," the rats would be pulled from the commercial right now. As things stand, he's going to have someone get back to me tomorrow on it. (Hope I'm here to get the call!)

Updates as they happen.


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## amandahoney (May 14, 2007)

fear mongering and inter-species xenophobia.

you know, this doesn't make me angry. it makes me sad, that such "information" is being spread about by "authoritative sources", and that people simply DON'T THINK FOR THEMSELVES. growing up in the county, my family has had some bizzare infestations of "pests". live traps, citronella candles, and a vacuum cleaner are really all we needed- no poison. and certainly no orkin man. but people are afraid to try anything themselves. they're programmed to believe they need to pay an "expert".

*sigh* people are willing to believe just about anything they're told. i think what we're talking about here is misrepresentation, and it's not illegal. if they said, "PESTS can carry disease" while showing a rat picture, they're simply associating disease with rats in the mind of the consumer, which is more powerful, more insidious advertising, because the message is subconscious and the consumers don't even know they're being "taught" something. it's disturbing.

this is totally the kind of thing i, as a psychology student, want to study, and debunk, and shout my findings to the media-numbed consumers of the western hemisphere.


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## FreedomDove (Aug 16, 2007)

Here is a list of diseases that rats and mice can transmit to humans:
Haantan Virus
Lymphocytic chorionmeningitis
Bubonic and pneumonic plaque
pneumocustis pneumonia
salmonellosis
rat bite fever (haverhill and sodoku)
I came from Baltimore and I know they had a "rat rub out" program. The city would pass out information on how to NOT create homes and food for rodents in your back yard. And after awhile if people didn't comply they would get fined. In Baltimore you would hear on the news how rats would chew on babies at night. People need to keep their houses and property clean and debris free. The pest control companies need to educate on the commercials. I use live traps for the mice that go into my chicken coop. Then I release them far from my house. They probably just come right back.


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## chrisstrikeagain (Apr 10, 2007)

Hmmm I'm a tad bit lost...Holly is sayin plagues cant be transfered, but freedomdove is sayin it can be...

I'm goin to talk to my vet tonite. see What she knows since she is a rat expert.

Holly, its nice to know Grizzly is on the rats side. I'll do my best with you to pry in and get in contact with the advertising agents and such and show outrage.

Because the connections between disease and rats must vanish!


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## FreedomDove (Aug 16, 2007)

According to the Laboratory Animal Technologist manual: The risk of transmitting the disese is low. In people the bubonic is 60% faltal if left untreated and the pneumonic is 95% fatal if left untreated, this is for humans. This is transmitted form wild caught rodents.


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## FreedomDove (Aug 16, 2007)

http://www.aalas.org/bookstore/allproducts.aspx

Here is a link for some excellent rodent books. Yeah I know, it's research related but it is some of the best rodent info you can find.


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## Forensic (Apr 12, 2007)

Bubonic plague is spread by the fleas that live on the rats, not by the rats themselves.


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## FreedomDove (Aug 16, 2007)

This is from Wikipedia. Please read bolded.

*The bubonic plague is mainly a disease in rodents and fleas. Infection in a human occurs when a person is bitten by a flea that has been infected by biting a rodent that has been infected by the bite of another infected flea. *The bacteria multiply inside the flea, sticking together to form a plug that blocks its stomach and causes it to begin to starve. The flea then voraciously bites a host and continues to feed, even though it can not fulfill its hunger, and consequently the flea vomits blood tainted with the bacteria back into the bite wound. The bubonic plague bacterium then infects a new host, and the flea eventually dies from starvation. Any serious outbreak of plague is usually started by other disease outbreaks in rodents, or some other crash in the rodent population. During these outbreaks, infected fleas that have lost their normal hosts seek other sources of blood.

In 1894, two bacteriologists, Alexandre Yersin of France and Shibasaburo Kitasato of Japan, independently isolated the bacterium in Hong Kong responsible for the Third Pandemic. Though both investigators reported their findings, a series of confusing and contradictory statements by Kitasato eventually led to the acceptance of Yersin as the primary discoverer of the organism. Yersin named it Pasteurella pestis in honor of the Pasteur Institute, where he worked, but in 1967 it was moved to a new genus, renamed Yersinia pestis in honor of Yersin. Yersin also noted that rats were affected by plague not only during plague epidemics but also often preceding such epidemics in humans, and that plague was regarded by many locals as a disease of rats: villagers in China and India asserted that, when large numbers of rats were found dead, plague outbreaks in people soon followed.

In 1898, the French scientist Paul-Louis Simond (who had also come to China to battle the Third Pandemic) established the rat-flea vector that drives the disease. He had noted that persons who became ill did not have to be in close contact with each other to acquire the disease. In Yunnan, China, inhabitants would flee from their homes as soon as they saw dead rats, and on the island of Formosa (Taiwan), residents considered handling dead rats a risk for developing plague. These observations led him to suspect that the flea might be an intermediary factor in the transmission of plague, since people acquired plague only if they were in contact with recently dead rats, but not affected if they touched rats that had been dead for more than 24 hours. In a now classic experiment, Simond demonstrated how a healthy rat died of plague after infected fleas had jumped to it from a plague-dead rat.

In septicemic plague, there is bleeding into the skin and other organs, which creates black patches on the skin. There are bite-like bumps on the skin, commonly red and sometimes white in the center. Untreated septicemic plague is universally fatal, but early treatment with antibiotics reduces the mortality rate to between 4 and 15 percent.[1][2][3] People who die from this form of plague often die on the same day symptoms first appear.

The pneumonic plague infects the lungs, and with that infection comes the possibility of person-to-person transmission through respiratory droplets. The incubation period for pneumonic plague is usually between two and four days, but can be as little as a few hours. The initial symptoms, of headache, weakness, and coughing with hemoptysis, are indistinguishable from other respiratory illnesses. Without diagnosis and treatment, the infection can be fatal in one to six days; mortality in untreated cases is 50-90%.[4]


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## Forensic (Apr 12, 2007)

Which means that a rodent bite wouldn't give it to a human... I'd assume.


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## FreedomDove (Aug 16, 2007)

I guess.


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## amandahoney (May 14, 2007)

...the plague? seriously, who gets the plague nowadays? that sounds just a teensy bit paranoid- "orkin man, come kill all the rats, because i might get the plague!"


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## mopydream44 (Jun 10, 2007)

I had the plague last week.......that sucked!


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## FreedomDove (Aug 16, 2007)

Are you feeling better? Glad you survived.


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## OnlyOno (Apr 4, 2007)

in colorado wild prairie dogs were found to be carrying the plague and monkey pox as well only a few years ago. so yes, it still exists. it's unlikely that you would get bitten by a prairie dog, but the reason it was a problem was that some people's dogs would get out and catch a prairie dog and then get infected and bring the plague back home.


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## amandahoney (May 14, 2007)

oh yeah, i remember that, the thing with the prairie dogs. i had just been on a trip to the pike's peak area around that time, and a few weeks after i returned i came down with meningitis (scary.) and everyone at the hospital thought i might have something like that, from colorado. talk about panic and fear-mongering. it probably had nothing to do with prairie dogs, though.


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## Holly (Dec 31, 2006)

The "biggie" diseases are Haantan, and "Rat Scratch Fever," which is the same thing as "Cat Scratch Fever." These, you can get directly from rats, BUT they are very, very rare.

Most of the rodent-related diseases require an "intermediary host." For instance, if a rat with the Plague bites you, you won't get the Plague. BUT, if a flea or tick bites an infected rat, and THEN bites you, you will get the Plague.

Unfortunately, in the days of the Plague, people were unaware of the concept of "quarrantine." If they would have quarrantined all of the plague sufferers, it would have cut down on the death toll immensely. When someone with the Plague died, all of the fleas would immediately look for a new host, and, since there was no quarrantine, the fleas would usually find a healthy host to infect. Were they in quarrantine, the only place that the infected fleas could go would be to other infected parties.

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Some of the things on the commercial really ~are~ dangerous; for instance, you can get West Nile Virus from a mosquito bite. But, after the research that I've done (and thanks for the links, BTW,) I don't believe that the rats belong in the commercial.

I went to their site, which included "Norway Rats," "Roof Rats," "House Mouse" and "Deer Mouse," and aside from Haanta (which is rare,) the biggest problem seems to be that they breed like...well, like rats. 

The answer: humane traps. (Or, just be happy to have so many ratties around!)

I don't think I can "fight city hall" on this one, but I wanted to vent here about it. Thanks for listening.

I still say that anyone who doesn't cover their garbage cans outside can expect a lot more visitors than two cute brown rats.


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## FreedomDove (Aug 16, 2007)

I live in the middle if nowhere outside of Reno, NV. We have pack rats here. They are the cutest freakin animal I have ever seen. They look like a Disney caracter. Anyway. They make nests under the hoods of your vehicles. Even if you drive the car everyday. They chew the wires and fall out on the road as you drive. It's horrible. I was live trapping them also so now the population directly around my house is down. The guy that lived at my place before I bought it had, not joking, 10-15 broken down vehicles that were full of junk on the property. There was hundreds of packrats when I moved in. Thank goodness they have seasonal litters and only 4 pups as average. There was one that ived in my garage for awhile. I noticed that they dogs food was going pretty fast. So I flipped over one of the dog sofas and there was, no joke, about 70 pounds of dog food in the sofa. It was insane. Packrats are so soft that you can't even tell that you are petting them. They also do horribly in captivity. They wont eat. They are pretty nice.


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## amandahoney (May 14, 2007)

FreedomDove said:


> They make nests under the hoods of your vehicles. Even if you drive the car everyday. They chew the wires and fall out on the road as you drive. It's horrible.


what if you got some kind of electronic repellant, like, one of those ultrasonic things, for your car? if it wouldn't mess up the car's electronics, that might keep them out of it while it's parked. i don't know how well they work, though.


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## FreedomDove (Aug 16, 2007)

They don't bother my vehicles anymore. This was when I first moved in and didn't know about pack rats. I was thinking about getting a few of them the place in the garage, chicken coop...


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## chrisstrikeagain (Apr 10, 2007)

Thats good you dont mind them nd you dont go physco over them. It must be somewhat of a pain, of course, but you trap them humaneley. =]


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## FreedomDove (Aug 16, 2007)

Pack rats ae so funny. I would opent he hood of my truck and they would sit there and stared at me. I could just reach and and they would let me pet them. One time there was a cottontail under my hood. At first I thought it was a huge pack rat until it turned around. That poor bunny was so scared, it ran and was screaming the whole time it was running away. Pack rat pups will hold onto the mothers teets and not let go when she runs. She is running and the pups are bouncing over the ground.


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## trisnic (Aug 20, 2007)

Awhile ago when I was a member of a community called "Acmepet" (long gone) there was a girl on there who had a colony of around 10 rats. Well one day she got very sick with symptoms. Her parents ended up having all the rats killed and tested for rat bite fever. None of them ended up having it and she believes it came from an outdoor cat.


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## FreedomDove (Aug 16, 2007)

Poor rats.


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## Spider (Mar 19, 2007)

I am just recovering from an attack of ringworm on my wrist, at first I thought I got it from my Rats as there is a strain which is caught from Rodents. I don't know how Rodents develope it but ,Dogs and cats catch it from going in or near burrows, and then it causes them to start itching, turns red and then thinning hair.
Anyways I was almost ready to loose the Furballs, and I took them to the Exotic and sprung for $250 in tests and hair cultures and the result was Negative!
To end a long story, we're all snug together under the covers on cold mornings and the Ringworm is gone after using Lamisil.
Your humble servant,
Spider


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## Holly (Dec 31, 2006)

Someone already pointed this out, but I think it bears repeating. People who live in very "natural" places (i.e. not the city) tend to be more used to "critters." We live in the country, and if something gets into the house, it's no big deal: "Hey, we have a mouse in here...better get the live trap out."

People in the city, though, who aren't used to sharing space with "critters," will wind up on top of a chair, maybe, if they see a cute little mouse in the house.

Someone please tell me what the "deal" is with Baltimore and rats? Do they have a LOT of rats? Is it a good place for a rat lover to live?

The pack rat is SO DARLING!


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## Bandit (Jul 30, 2007)

Rats live in the lower barn that isn't used at all (its really run down and not safe for the horses to be in). They don't bother me. Since we got a cat they haven't been in the grain room. This big cute brown one ran into the sliding glass door the other day and once a baby got into the outside laundry room when I by accident I left the door open and fell into the sink. I couldn't just leave her there so I used a scoop to pick her up and set her out into the forest. So long as they aren't in my grain room, horse stalls or house I don't mind them. I leave them be. After all, the rats need to live somewhere.


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## Kimmiekins (Apr 14, 2007)

FreedomDove said:


> I came from Baltimore [...] In Baltimore you would hear on the news how rats would chew on babies at night.


I had to look that up myself.

"In general, however, it appears that rat bites are relatively rare even in areas where rats are common. A survey of 1,363 people in Baltimore found that although nearly two-thirds of respondents (64%) reported seeing rats in streets and alleys, only 6% reported seeing rats inside residences, and only 1.2% had experienced any rodent bite (rat or mouse) in their lifetime (Childs et al. 1991)."
http://www.ratbehavior.org/WildRatBites.htm

Rats chewing on babies! :roll: Ha. Obviously, the high population of the wild rats got people's imaginations rolling. Humans are a funny species. I honestly couldn't see WHY a rat would choose a baby as "food" when there's plenty of REAL food fit for rats for them to feast on in the kitchen. :lol: Also, you gotta sit there and wonder... Why would rats exclusively pick something we humans see as not being able to defend themselves (as opposed to, say, adults)? Because that makes the rats look more evil - they pick on poor babies!

Anyway, it's definitely all about misinformation spread about rats.  So many people believe everything they hear/read - and if "experts" like Orkin say it's so, it must be. :? I think what we need to do, as rat owners, is get the word out everywhere we can. Spread the TRUTH... Hopefully, at some point, people will start realizing that everything they've been told isn't true. And that (domestic) rats make perfect pets!


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## FreedomDove (Aug 16, 2007)

This is from TIME and is about Baltimore. When I go back home I still go down town at night to watch the rats play in the alleies. And it is not a lie, they do get as big as cats.

Rats bite men because they like human blood. Johns Hopkins' Curt P. Richter, Ph.D., in the Journal of the American Medical Association, says he can prove it.

Dr. Richter's interest was aroused when he noticed how many people came in to Johns Hopkins Hospital to be treated for rat bites. There were 87 in four years, most of them from the two-square-mile area surrounding the hospital, and Dr. Richter heard of 28 others who were bitten but did not come for treatment. Most of those bitten were babies under a year old. "One child was bitten on eleven different nights."

Rat bites are serious. All of the Johns Hopkins cases had infections or pieces of flesh eaten away. Seven developed rat-bite fever.*

Dr. Richter gave three rats each a dish containing 139 grams (about 4Â½ ounces) of operating-room blood and serum. In less than 24 hours "two of the rats had eaten all of the blood and one had eaten 47 grams. When one considers that the average normal food intake of full-grown wild rats does not usually exceed 35 to 40 grams, the large intake of 139 grams indicates that the rats had a real craving for this fresh human blood."

* In rat-bite fever, the original wound heals temporarily, later opens again, larger and more angry-looking, a rash develops, temperature rises to 103Â° or 104Â° F., falls to normal in a couple of days, then rises again in cycles which may recur for months. The patient may grow thin, have muscle pains, delirium, arthritis. Treatment is similar to that for syphilis and saves nearly every case

This came from a NYC news site.

â€˜When rats bite babies in their cribs, itâ€™s always at night (and most often on the babyâ€™s face). It happens because the baby smells of milk, the odor attracts a rat that is looking for food. To protect your baby, take the babyâ€™s bottle away as soon as the baby is asleep, then wash the babyâ€™s hands and face. A clean baby in a clean crib is going to be a lot safer from a rat attack.â€™
â€”NYC Department of Health

About 2 weeks ago my manager gave me his kids pet rat. One of his reasons for giving it away was because it kept chewing out of cages and biting his kids faces at night. When he told me that I laughed so bad, I thought I was back in Baltimore. I am not kidding. I think that the kids mistreated it because he is a little crazy. This is a fine example why to never keep just one rat.


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## cjshrader (Feb 15, 2007)

I thought humans could catch strep throat from rats?

Or maybe it was the other way around, we can give it to them? I think that's what it was.

The point is, I agree with you Holly, I don't think there are many if any diseases we can get from rats. I've even been seriously bit a few times with no infections (If I remember correctly, since rats don't salivate, they're mouths are exceptionally clean).

However, I don't think this rat stereotype will ever be turned around. People already have the "pest" image in their head, and though I wish you luck for trying to do something about it, I fear there isn't much that can be done.


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## Kimmiekins (Apr 14, 2007)

cjshrader - Rats can get Strep *Pneumonia* (caused by Streptococcus bacteria) from humans, which is NOT the same thing as strep throat. It's a form of Pneumonia, as the name suggests. Rats who catch this form of Pneumonia can die in days. While humans can have a variety of causes of Pneumonia, it's a good idea if you're unsure of what caused it, that you stay away from rats until you're better.

That's one thing I hate about the internet, FreedomDove. We can both find "facts" (and what's true and what's not, we don't know) that contradict each other. Fact is that "rat bit fever" is more rare than most think, especially compared to "cat scratch fever". Over at Goosemoose, there are hundreds of users who've been bitten, only 1 that we know of who's ever gotten an infection from it. No one had "pieces of flesh eaten away" (of course, no one sat there long enough for that to happen, either!). Of course, that is domestic rats (mostly, though I think one or two have been bitten by wild rats), of course wild rats are a bit different, but still!

The article in TIME seems a bit absurd, unless the rats around there were carrying something most rats don't or none of the people woke up for a rat to be feasting off them (and giving how much rat bites HURT, I find that hard to believe!). Certainly, a baby would scream bloody murder if that were happening to them, and if the parents didn't respond fast enough, some damage could occur but is that the rats fault? I'd wonder if a rat would continue to attack with a flailing, screaming baby, but I can't say for sure.

As big as cats? I've never gotten an answer on how big wild rats are, but I can't find anything concrete saying they get THAT big. Anyone got anything stating how big they can get? I know that so many claim that the rats in the NYC sewer are so huge, but then everything I see (photos, rat-friendly people's firsthand experiences in seeing sewer rats) points to overreacting. *shrug* I never saw in when I was in NY, so I can't say for sure.

Is there any other studies done by other groups that "prove" rats like blood? I've heard nothing but the opposite. Quite frankly, I don't believe it one bit. I've had quite a few horrid bites, one that sent me to the hospital and I now have permanent tendon damage in that finger, and he's never shown any tendency to want human blood since getting a taste. Believe me, he got a lot that day, too (and yet, when we cleaned the blood-splattered cage, there was still blood all over it... Nobody had tried to eat it.) He hasn't even ATTEMPTED to bite since. Same with any others. What that article doesn't say is what else was given to them. I suppose if all you gave a rat to eat was human blood, eventually they would eat it to survive. Many humans would do the same! I'd love to see a full write-up on this study. We don't know if this was in addition to other food or not.

Rat bites can be nasty, no doubt. But so can ANY animal bite. I still believe that there's too much stigma against rats and it shows in most of the media and often, there are myths printed in the articles as if they are facts (when most often, they have been proven not to be). Rarely do we see positive media about rats. I'd love to find a way to change that.


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## Bandit (Jul 30, 2007)

I know personally the rats around here aren't all that huge. No where near the size of my cat (and I don't have an overly large cat either, she's average).


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## Holly (Dec 31, 2006)

I would LOVE to have a pet rat that was the size of a cat...cuddle, cuddle, cuddle!


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## twitch (Jan 4, 2007)

i believe the afican gambian pouch rat will grow to be about the size of a smallish cat, 5-7 pounds. but they are illegal in canada and if i remember right they are illegal in most of the states as well. i think they might be ok in california though... don't take my word on it though... 

as for the bad press, that's just part of the rat life right now. cats went through it for a while too. they were burned right along with all the "witches" and blamed for the plague almost as much if not more then rats when the plague was around. for some reason cats were absolved of their involment with the plague but rats still carry that stigma... go figure...


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## Kimmiekins (Apr 14, 2007)

True, but the African Gambian pouch rats do grow to the size of a cat, but I wouldn't *think* that's what would be in Baltimore. Especially not in droves, I believe they are solitary animals. They are illegal in California, actually, and some other states.

So true, Twitch. And messed up.  Apparently, though, rats as pets were popular before the 1930s. I learned that today! Hopefully we'll cycle around and they'll be more accepted again.


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## cjshrader (Feb 15, 2007)

A little off topic, but if you do a youtube search for pouched rat some lady somewhere owns one and it's adorable.


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## Mana (Apr 22, 2007)

Gambian pouched rats are illegal in all of the US, because of some problem with rodents from African being let loose and making prairie dogs sick who in turn made some people sick (or something of that nature). So now it's illegal to import, sell, or breed any rodent from Africa. I looked into it a few months ago because someone in my area has one from before the ban took place, so she can still legally keep it, she just can't breed or sell it. 

And I, too, would love a rat the size of a cat!


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