As I have mentioned before, but not very often because it doesn't crop up much in the natural course of events, I am a Librarian. As such, this means that from time to time I need to do some research.
Today I have been researching RATS and STRESS.
You would not believe just how stressed rats are. It would appear that pretty well everything stresses out a rat. On Scopus there are currently 75,564 articles on rats and stress.
75,564. That is a lot of stressed-out rats. They reckon that if you live in London you are never more than seven feet from a rat. Fortunately we do not live in London, but I reckon there a still a lot of rats here.
I would guess there are probably two or three rats for every person, so in this University alone there may well be 75,564 rats - living in the basements, living in the wall cavities, eating in the canteens... (There was that rather famous incident a couple of summers ago when we had a bit of an infestation in the Library, when someone left a half-eaten pizza under his desk while he was on his holidays. I won't name names, but he was of course an IT Boy.)
Anyway, it saddens me to think of all these fraught rodents living so close to my desk, so I got to wondering - is anyone doing anything about this? Do, for example, rats ever get to do anything nice, maybe have a holiday, go to the beach?
Yes they do!!!
Look at this:
Isn't that great?! You can see more pics and read all about it at Your Local Surf.
The Internet is indeed a powerful search tool; a few clicks can take you from the depths of despair to a joyous day at the beach.
I love being a Librarian.
You are an excellent librarian, but a bit strange.....
ReplyDeleteHave you seen the Corrie cat's ashes have been sold?
Anonjan
Yeah I did see that. I wonder why you'd want to buy a powdered dead cat - it's not like you can add water and resconstitute it, say like instant coffee or something.
ReplyDeleteOn the subject of pets - I think the sea monkeys have all died. Again.
According to recent research, apparently pigs can feel optimistic or pessimistic according to the way they are treated. That, of course, comes as no surprise to me.
ReplyDeleteI miss being a librarian. Sigh.
And there are many times, being a bit of an info junkie I WISH I were a librarian. They have access to so much interesting information because they know where to look...
ReplyDeleteAt first when I read the title of Dishwasher Crab's latest post, I thought she was referring to the other kind of rats (bi-pedal) who frequent boardrooms...hee, hee. And then when I looked at the colorful photo of the surfing mouse -- that reminded me of two childhood rat/mouse stories I enjoyed:
E.B. White's Stuart Little
and I forgot the author's name but there was another storybook called "Mouse on the Motorcycle" -- anyone read these when they were young enough to think rats were cute things?
:-)???
Well, to tell the truth I don't have much sympathy right now for the stress that these rats-in-suits are under or the furry rats or city vermin such as squirrels, racoons, skunks
are under as today I woke up to the nasty odors of skunk or skunks who must have had an altercation with one of the neighbor's cats...
Speaking of cats...yuk...I agree about "freeze" dried cat -- even a famous, dead one... There is a rather popular one on youtube -- Maru the cat from Japan -- a slightly chubby but handsome Scottish fold male cat that likes to jump into cardboard boxes and squeeze his head into small empty paper cartons...
By the way Pork Chop -- I think I caught a TV program that said genetically, pigs and humans were quite close...
And now from rats to Corrie (there are a few rats there, too) --I'm caught up now -- I'm enjoying Lewis the Lizard sweet-talking Audrey possibly into buying a Greek hotel/B&B while flirting to death with Dierdre. Here's hoping the pompous husband Ken (I kinda still like him) gets insanely jealous...
There's Colin Fishwick who's just dropped dead and the usual inevitable ensues -- where to dispose of the corpse???
I hope everyone is enjoying their summer so far. It's already August...time flies...wish I knew where to...SIGH!
Hi Snacky! Lovely to see you again! Wasn't Friday's Corrie a treasure? Roy and Hayley tucking into the, err, non-alcoholic punch with relish and the late Colin Fishwick being dragged up and down the ginnel rolled up in a rug. Brilliant.
ReplyDeleteBack to subject of rodents, I loved Norris's line, which was something like "I saw a rat out here the other day, eating a fig roll, bold as brass he was".