Between the Species - On the Status of Vermin - Young
Rats, unlike prairie dogs or deer, are vermin that are present in all societies. They are problems for urbanites, suburbanites and rural communities. Rural communities have problems with rats, as well as mice, because they tend to inhabit places that enable them to easily access human buildings, barns, houses, and silos to name a few. In urban and suburban places, rats tend to live in sewers or places that are congenial to the rat-life-style, which are normally out of view of humans. Like any animal, rats would rather have a safe, warm place where food is readily available then a cold, wet, hostile environment in which food may not be easy to find. In turn, rats have probably been living in and/or around human settlements since the first civilizations. They have adapted to live in close proximity to people and rely on humans for their life-styles because humans, in creating a place for humans to live, have produced waste to eat and areas congenial to the rat-life-style. Because rats live in cohabitation with humans (a more intimate relationship than invasive species) and they have nasty behaviors that humans find annoying or troublesome, they are candidates for vermin-hood. A pamphlet released by the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare states, “Rats in the human environment cause enormous economic losses. They consume or contaminate vast quantities of food and feed, and they destroy other property, as when they cause fires by gnawing the insulation of electric wires.” It continues, “Each rat damages between $1 and $10 worth of food and other materials per year by gnawing and feeding, and contaminates 5 to 10 times mores. Thus, rats may cost the United States between $500,000,000 and 1,000,000,000 annually in terms of direct economic losses.” (Ibid., 1) The losses, in this case, are economic not ecological, and are extremely impacting on the United States.