This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. In the UK there is a similar debate regarding foxes (it's not really any different.) We destroy their environment (sometimes building our homes directly in it) and get all defensive when they end up on our doorstep. We do not accommodate for them and label them as pests. Wild animals will always be dangerous and aggressive, if they have no food and are clinging to life, if they are forced into our space then it's not their fault. Rather than looking to destroy such animals, more humane alternatives should be perused. By braving dark alleys late nights, Sullivan was not only able to see rats during their favorite time of the day but also to see the types of food they prefer. While rats will eat just about anything, if given a choice, which they have in any major city with restaurants, they prefer some foods over others. Yes, rats are foodies. But food is just one chapter in this detailed book, as there are also chapters on fights, exterminators, traps, and…plague. The infamous plague outbreak in San Francisco in the early 1900s is covered here (brought by ship rats), a reminder that even when the public’s health and safety is put at risk, there are always “leaders” who will put self-interest and money before everything else (cough, cough, coronavirus).

Being a big fan of Stephen King and the horror genre, a family friend told me about James Herbert, I was intrigued so looked him up and thought I'd start with his first novel, The Rats, I wasn't disappointed. For some reason, I share Sullivan’s fascination with universally despised but fascinating creatures. (for a good example of this I highly recommend Kelsi Nagy’s wonderful book “Trash Animals”) Williamson, J.N., ed. (1987). Masques II: All-New Stories of Horror and the Supernatural. Baltimore: Maclay & Assoc. ISBN 978-0-940776-24-1. Herbert became inspired to write The Rats in early 1972, while watching Tod Browning's Dracula; specifically, after seeing the scene in which Renfield describes his recurring nightmare about hordes of rats. Linking the film to childhood memories he had of rats in London's East End. Sullivan notes there are 250 businesses doing rat control in NYC, the largest having 100 employees. Let's say they all did = 25,000 employees, each dispatching a conservative one rat a day (say in a 400 day year) = ten million rats gone - they wouldn't be in business long if there were only 250,000 to deal with.

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Fleming, Mike Jr. (March 4, 2015). "MGM Options Mrs. Frisby & The Rats Of Nimh, Sets Ice Age 's Michael Berg To Hatch Family Franchise". Deadline Hollywood . Retrieved March 9, 2015. I’ll admit, I recently found myself re-watching Don Bluth’s film adaptation The Secret of NIMH, which peaked my curiosity to seek out the source material. While I first saw this film as an adult, I cannot say that this story evokes much childhood nostalgia for me as it does for the many others who grew up with the brave, widowed Mrs. Frisby and the ingenious, yet secretive rats.

Another man sat rigid in his seat, eyes still on the screen as though watching the film, hands clenching the seat arms. A rat sat on his lap gnawing a hole in his stomach." If I had to guess why this book was written, I’d say it was to shine light on the real settlers of NYC, the rats and pests that were long before people. Rats are surprisingly important to the city’s history as the author did a good job of explaining. They’re everywhere- in poor, rich, and middle class areas.The great equalizers, rats have played a role in the growth and death of many NYC neighborhoods and beyond. One of the most interesting parts of the book to me was the chapter on the garbage riots of the 1970s and how rats became an important pawn to the union strikers asking for fair wages. Rats were also used as weapons (literally) in the Harlem tenant strikes in the 1960s and helped lead the city towards safer and cleaner housing for immigrant families. There’s a lot of history interwoven in the authors narrative and I liked the way he painted a picture of rats as citizens of the city alongside humans.a b c d Holland, Steve (21 March 2013). "James Herbert obituary". Guardian.co.uk. London . Retrieved 24 March 2013. When this happens, when a mouse runs past my foot while out in the yard, or, Heaven forbid, comes anywhere near the structure of our house, my screams often sound like the sound effects from the famous shower scene from Psycho. The epilogue indicates that one female rat survived the purge by being trapped in the basement of a grocery shop. There, it gives birth to a new litter, including a new white two-headed rat. Rats are pretty gross. Not the pet rats you occasionally see in cages but full on wild, eating garbage, long tailed, with yellow teeth rats.

I wasn't sure on the time period. I thought maybe it was set around the time the book was written, but then looking at the story of Mary I thought that was set before the 70's so this confused me a bit and I would have liked that set.

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Pequeños peludos roedores, lentamente masticando su comida. Qué comida? Bueno, eso es otra historia. Sullivan, for reasons not particularly clear to himself, decides to spend four seasons in a New York City alley observing rats in their daily habitat. What is evil? The possibility, as we travel with Sands into the moral maze that he sets up is that we will come to see how a man’s capacity for love, not his crimes, constitutes the real measure of his soul.

In the last couple of days, I had to take a road journey and decided to listen to an audiobook on the way. I wanted something I had previously read before and saw this one was available from the library. The First Mate had never heard of it and I was appalled. I adored the 1982 movie and the book when I was little but hadn't read or watched it in over a decade or more. I got excited to revisit it. Lots of gory action from flesh getting ripped apart and thousands of humans getting eat. Yeah, don’t go into this book if you don’t like some gore and more. If you like your horror with scary creatures, this might be a fun book for you to read. Along the way he traces the history of the alley from tenant strikes in the 1960’s to the origins of the American Revolution. These historical vignettes are mostly fairly interesting but the book really shines when it focuses on the rats.The most interesting sections didn't happen until toward the end of the book. They were the chapters covering the spread of the bubonic plague in the middle ages and the pest control measures that were taken after 9/11. The latter was particularly interesting because that's not something people really think about. But other than that, meh. The rats themselves are absolutely horrifying, making for a perfect, relentless, collective villain. Particularly in those moments when one or two stop and stare menacingly. *shudders* Rats are, of course, right up there as one of the most repulsive creatures and this book easily draws on that natural revulsion and magnifies it.