Their year it may be, according to the Chinese lunar calendar. But despite this honour, Ireland's rats could be keeping a lower profile than of late during the next 12 months, writes Frank McNally.
An upsurge of rat-sightings was one of the side-effects of the boom. The relentless construction since the last Year of the Rat (1996) disturbed large numbers of rodents and forced them into interactions with the public that we and they would normally prefer to avoid. Now the building frenzy has peaked, and so have complaints to the health authorities - though economists differ about how long the slow-down in rat appearances will last.
Jackie Kelly, an environmental health officer with the HSE, confirms that the number of call-outs has levelled off. Over the past couple of years, there have been fewer such cases as the woman who baked a cake and put it on the windowsill to cool with a tea-towel over it, before returning to see "the towel move". Eek! But Kelly suggests that, construction work aside, the increase in complaints arose partly from a culture clash. The many urbanites migrating to what used to be countryside were more likely to report an encounter with rat than someone reared on a farm - who "would probably just hit it with a shovel".
Increased squeamishness is good news for Rentokil, whose Irish manager Mike O'Mahoney remains bullish on the general pest outlook. Whatever about 2008 being the year of the rat, 2007 was the year of the pest-controller, he says, with business booming like never before.
Of course, Rentokil is not dependent on rats. Mice, ants, wasps, houseflies and even bedbugs are good earners too. Which is why the company now employs 180 staff. And far from predicting a downturn, O'Mahony is as optimistic as any estate agent about continued demand for his business.
What most people who deal with it professionally agree is that rattus norvegicusis a shy creature, avoiding humans - where possible - like the plague. The hit film Ratatouillehas not yet done for the species what Shrekdid for donkeys, and rats still know when they're not wanted. But the Irish Timesarchive suggests this was not always the case.
An intriguing headline from June 1935 reads: "Rats Own House. Hold Boxing Matches in Yard." Both claims were made at an Ennis Urban Council meeting, during which one member illustrated the town's infestation thus: "I am telling the truth when I say that I often saw batches of rats in my own backyard having boxing matches. Even if a human being makes his appearance in the yard the rats are not afraid. They will skirmish here and there and hop over your boots."
According to the report, Ennis was enduring a biblical-style affliction. Residents in O'Connell Street complained that rats were using their homes as a "coursing ground" and that it was impossible to sleep at night until you got used to the squealing. Mechanics in the Great Southern Railway yard had taken to fastening overalls over their boots to "prevent the rats from climbing up their legs".
Rats had been seen riding the footplate of an engine leaving the railway sheds. They had also taken over a house nearby (the one in the headline), forcing the human occupants to leave. And their love of rail transport was such that "credible eye-witnesses" had reported "thousands" of rats crossing a road every night at 3am, between the West Clare Railway yard and the company headquarters.
Those were glory days for rodents, clearly, and not just in Ireland. A few years later, the New Yorkerwriter Joseph Mitchell interviewed rat-catchers in that city and found them lost in admiration for their adversaries, especially those who survived to old age (about four years for a rat).
"Rats that survive to the age of four are the wisest and most cynical beasts on earth," one exterminator told Mitchell. "A trap means nothing to them, no matter how skilfully set. They just kick it around until it snaps: then they eat the bait. And they can detect poisoned bait a yard off. I believe some of them can read."
Whatever about New York rats, it was once believed that their Irish counterparts had a weakness for literature. Or more precisely that Irish bards had the power to kill them with rhymes. Those of you who have ever attended a bad poetry reading may find this easier to believe. In any case, the rat-killing power of bards is mentioned by Ben Jonson and Sir Philip Sidney.
And even Shakespeare has Rosalind ( As You Like It), besieged by her lover's amorous verse, remembering a previous incarnation in this country: "I was never so be-rhymed since Pythagoras' time, that I was an Irish rat." Rhyming is not one of the services offered by Rentokil. But there are plenty of alternative treatments; and compared with the days when they ran Ennis, Irish rats are now mainly an underground movement. Rest assured, though, that however invisible they might be in the next 12 months, they haven't gone away.
The Chinese believe humans born during rat years are unusually attractive to the opposite sex. You can see the connection. Rats start breeding at four months. Thereafter a dominant male can mate with up to 20 females in six hours. Each female can deliver a litter within three or four weeks. And a litter can comprise up to 20 babies.
This is why, astrology or no astrology, every year is the year of the rat.