Liberté, Égalité, Raternité

Rats..............in France!

via flickr (cc)

Consider the humble rat. Rattus norvegicus. The ne plus ultra of domesticable rodents (suck it, bunnies). They’ve lived among us for tens of thousands of years, spreading joy and disease in decidedly unequal measure, squeaking their way into the annals of history as a species to both revere and revile. Here in America, rats are often political foils to be stomped and gassed, their corpses displayed by bloodthirsty lawmakers desperate to unleash the full might of their municipal authority on a species with whom most city-dwellers have already reached detente.

But what if there were another way? What if that unspoken, if occasionally fragile, pact between hearty urbanites and urban rats were something more? Something official? Something…French?