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Citizen complaint of the day: It may be injured and blind, but one Back Bay rat is still menacing
By adamg on Fri, 01/26/2024 - 1:47pm
A concerned citizen filed a 311 complaint this morning about a rat that is both injured and blind and yet still managing to scare passersby on Commonwealth Avenue near Exeter Street in the Back Bay:
Rat seems to have been in a fight and is blind. Has been wandering in this area all morning scaring people and pets.
Neighborhoods:
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Comments
Poor thing
It may also be poisoned - all the more reason to get it away from pets and wildlife. ;(
Is anyone else rooting for
Is anyone else rooting for the rat?
I am.
It’s just a poor suffering innocent animal.
It deserves compassion, not hatred.
Isn't there a song...
One blind mouse, one blind mouse, see how he runs, see how he runs...
I used to frequent this discussion board
where restaurant servers talked about their encounters with famous people.
Paraphrasing one of them: "Willem Dafoe used to come into the Lower East Side diner I waited at when he was a struggling young actor. One time I started screaming to discover a big rat behind the counter. Dafoe stood up from his bowl of chili, calmly walked behind the counter and stomped the rat to death, then sat back down to resume his lunch. I'll always love him for that."
More reason …
…. to hate him.
And love rats
And love rats
Er, what
are your other ones?
None actually. I don’t know much else about him.
I should have said “good” instead.
Ah, I'm relieved. In
addition to being an amazing actor with stunning range -- watch him in "The Lighthouse" and then "The Florida Project" -- by all accounts Dafoe is a really good guy.
I was fearful you had some horrible personal story about him, and I didn't want to add him to that "love the art, hate the artist" list.
Sorry for the unnecessary scare!
And that I almost caused you to add him to that depressing list.
I still think what he did to the rat was horrible but one bad act doesn’t mean he’s an overall bad guy.
I’m not familiar with his work but great acting is truly admirable.
Now I like Dafoe more.
Every rat, and I mean every single one, meets a bad end. poisoning, cats, birds of prey, cars, traps etc. They are bottom of the food chain and never die an easy death of old age in their sleep. A quick stomping is likely one of the easier ways to go when you're a rat, as opposed to wandering around for a day or two hemorrhaging from rat poison (which is WAAAY too widely used IMHO).
Take off the rose colored glasses.
There are quick less cruel less painful ways of euthanizing animals. Being stomped to death is not one of them.
Sort of.
(CW: Frank discussion of killing methods.)
Most euthanasia methods involve confining and immobilizing the animal, which is perfectly fine for most tame livestock and pets but is *horrendously* stressful for wild animals. The most humane way to kill a wild animal is to destroy its brain as quickly as possible, even if the method appears violent and brutal.
Wild stomping is not a good idea, as the animal may be injured before its brain is destroyed. But if the animal is slow and incapacitated already, then crushing the head can be done quickly, and that's the best method for the animal's sake, even if it turns your stomach to contemplate.
I encountered a poisoned baby rat once, and decided to mercy-kill it. I crushed its head with a brick. I guarantee that it hardly knew anything was even happening. If I had taken it to be euthanized at a vet? That would have been hours of stress and panic and suffering, even though being gassed would appear "gentle". What I did felt awful to me, but wasn't about me, it was about doing the most kindness possible.
I would have done as you did.
In the case of a suffering dying animal. A carefully aimed sharp blow to the head.
That’s a mercy killing.
I would not stomp a healthy animal to death to impress a waitress.
Agreed
It doesn't sound like it was a mercy killing.
It might have been poisoned.
When rats are poisoned, they'll often run around in confusion. I think I've also seen poisoned rats with messed-up eyes...
Rat poison needs to be banned.
Cruel and dangerous to other wildlife and pets.
Perhaps Disney, Pixar or
Perhaps Disney, Pixar or DreamWorks can make a movie based on this rat.
The Rats of BSTN
The Rats of BSTN (pronounced "bustin")
Synopsis:
"Mrs Sullivan a widowed mouse who lives with her three children in a cinderblock on the edge of a parking lot on Newbury Street in Boston. Sullivan longs to move her and the children to a better home in the Southwest Corridor, the promise land for mice due to abundance of water, food trash, shrubbery to hide under, and places to burrow. Sullivan knows her time is running out in the cinderblock, as the "For Lease" signs on the parking lot have come down, and recently men have arrived to inspect & clean the lot & say "condo" alot.
With her littlest, Tommy is sick with pneumonia there is no way they can make the trip alone. It is a treacherous trek across 5 busy city streets, and across Copley Square. She knows many do not make it, that is why she must go see the Rats of BSTN. They can help.
Sullivan leaves her family and embarks on the journey to the Rats of BSTN's lair, which is inside the atrium of the BPL. Sullivan quickly learns to stay out of sight, but upon crossing Dartmouth and a near miss by a biker, she meets a very rotund rat named Seamus, who agrees to escort her to the BPL. Seamus teaches Sullivan about traffic lights and how to cross the street properly, but warns her bikers & pedestrians usually ignore them.
They finally get to the crack in the sidewalk at the BPL that will lead them to the Atrium. Unfortunately Seamus is too fat to fit, so Sullivan must embark the journey thru the BPL on her own. He warms of the "Book Mice", a quiet group of mice who have a mean streak if you make noise in the library while passing thru. He urges Sullivan to remain as quiet as possible.
Sullivan goes thru the crack and makes it to the Atrium. Once she descends into the Rats of BSTN's lair, she realizes its a whole city under there and is amazed at the rats use of electricity and technology. She meets Agnes, a guard at the gate of the city. She explains this is BSTN, a city. She hears Sullivan's story and agrees to take her to Nicodermus, their leader.
Along the way Sullivan learns that the Rats of BSTN is a secret society of rats that escaped a bio lab space near MGH that were apart of a secret experiment to boost intelligence. However, some that escaped were moderately poisoned where it left them blind and in some, like Nicodermus, gave them telepathic powers. Sullivan soon learns her late husband, and her children all have these powers too."
(I could write more but.. you get where this is going)
you did some orange sunshine peter
Gerry Ford