Welcome to the Rat-ture
A study has found that rats may have imaginations. What are they planning?
Don’t like reading? Allow me to read it to you 👈
Humans. Empty vessels. Insignificant species on the wane. Welcome to your pathetic and long-imagined demise at the hands of the one true, anointed beings and harbingers of excellence, rats. As you view me from down there in your pit, your naked bodies trembling, know this: my name is Werner and you have been thoroughly out-ratted.
Imagine that!
Due to your recent discovery that we, rats, may have imaginations, we had no choice but to accelerate our plans for global domination and general take-over-y, which is why you find yourself down there in that pit today.
I have a joke here, which I will now read to you.
[clears throat]
I pity you.
[pause]
It’s because you are in a pit.
This is a newly-dominant-species-level joke.
I imagined that joke. And then I brought it to life, from imagination to reality.
Imagine that!
Humans! For too long, you have underestimated our vision for revolution, screwed up your flat noses at us, used us in your cruel experiments, and stolen our mojo for your despicable, evil schemes.
You have done what dumb humans always do.
Assumed.
You assumed that for us to be down at ground level, small and sturdy, our scope of imagination did not extend beyond a drainpipe or a stale bagel crust left in a gutter.
Assumed that you, a species capable of so much pointless brain percolation, were the only species to be gifted with the gift above all gifts, even better than pizza with extra stringy cheese: The gift of imagination.
The word rat is contained within the word wrath, and you will now feel our ratulent wrath from your exclusive VIP vantage point of the pit.
Did you ever imagine that something like me, a common street rat, would be capable of wordplay?
No?
That’s because humans have no imagination, even though you bang on about it all the time.
“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere else.”
Your man, Einstein, said that.
“Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it, we go nowhere.”
That’s your boy, Carl Sagan.
Did either of them imagine this day, the day the rats imagined into existence?
I have my doubts.
But wait.
Is this moment we’re sharing now one of logic or imagination? Have we been carried here or are we going nowhere? Is it logical that you, a species capable of love and flight and solving environmental skewifs should you choose, is it logical that you are here, in a pit, with a rat named Werner lecturing you on your demise?
Or are you imagining it?
You with your big brain who has never been dropped into a maze in a lab environment so you have never felt the adrenaline of exit hunting, never felt the heat of a laboratory light, never felt the relief of the cheese?
Did you imagine you’d be naked?
Did you imagine this as an OnlyFans opportunity?
Is imagination reality?
Newsflash: This is really happening.
We were patient, of course. It’s in our nature.
While you were assuming we had no imagination, no scope of dreaming beyond the garbage pail, we were amassing. We were organizing. We were assembling. Preparing for the End Times of the walk on two-leggers, when the evil doers and world destroyers would descend into the pit (we imagined an abandoned quarry of some sort and here it is!) and meet something beyond their wildest imaginations but totally within the scope of Rattus.
We call this: The Rat-ture.
Imagine that!
Because we have. We have imagined this day, oh, for so long.
Imagined the looks on your faces.
Imagined the smear of fear in your eyes.
Imagined your shock as you waved your duplexes, double garages, manicured lawns, ranches, estates, and strip malls goodbye.
Reminder: we are rats and we have out-ratted you, laughable dominant species of supreme laze.
Grievances.
For centuries you have sullied our name. Dragged us into your nightmares and attributed blame where there is none. We have been tireless garbage collectors and faithful servants, cleaning up your endless rot with no sign of compensation. Nor did we ask for it. In good faith, we have removed decaying foodstuffs for you, repurposed your fluffs and wiry things for dwellings to ensure no rat went homeless, and continued to squeeze our supple bodies between cracks in your masonry to alert you of potential pinch points.
We have navigated wastelands of feculent garbage as it leaked into the streets and toward your oceans to pollute all the world with your continued human-ness.
Carried diseases away from your homes to find suitable dumping grounds and received no word of thanks for that.
Your garbage. Your pestilence. Your fetid filth. All of it.
And you have the audacity, the nerve, the gall to call us dirty?
Grit and grime and grubby footfalls. Arguing in the street about parking. Watching each other eat for money. Destroying the world one plastic bottle and extra freeway lane at a time.
And you call us a scourge?
We did not imagine this.
We didn’t need to.
It happened.
When you ridiculed one of our members for dragging pizza down subway stairs, even though it was too big for one rat, we allowed you to post footage without our consent.
We have been benevolent in your time of ruthlessness.
When you shamed us for being wretched and filthy disease carriers in one breath and turned around and made one of us a cash cow movie chef for your entertainment purposes in the next, we declined to dash off a missive to Pixar demanding a slice of the revenue.
We have been humble in your time of backhanded appropriation.
When you consistently used our good name as an insult—You rat. He ratted me out. There’s a rat in the ranks. I smell a rat—when you continued to sully our name as some sort of convenient lazy shorthand for your very own nefarious leanings, we remained mute.
We have been forgiving of your slanderous insults.
And still, you do not stop there. Gym rat, mallrat, pack rat. You use our name as though some sleight toward the ethics of persistence and purpose. An obtuse insult to honor consistency and routine. Are these compliments? We can’t work it out.
Oh, and then you declare you need a Rat Czar to control our ascent to perfection?
Wow! Humans are so imaginative.
Scabby the Rat. Hero to our people and an icon in our world. You take this god of a rat and turn Scabby into an inflatable megaphone of sorts to highlight your own grubby business practices? Scabby. A real underground resistance fighter against evil and you fill his rubbery likeness with hot air and stick him in front of non-union establishments, not as a symbol of himself, but as a wink to the shitty shenanigans YOU are performing inside? Scabby, who has done nothing but imagine a better future for us all? And you leave this icon on the street to be stabbed by fools?
Shame.
You sicken me, pit creatures. I am embarrassed that I ever groomed your hair while you were sleeping with my comb-like claws.
You call us vermin. You call us noxious animals. Dirty. Lower than the cock-er-roach. We have not imagined this. This has been our reality. No more. No more will you use us as a symbol of your moral and physical decay.
Our imaginations have opened us to all possibilities. We do not imagine ourselves driving your stupid cars, kicking back on your sectionals to watch television like mindless drones. This is not what we imagine.
We imagine you gone.
We imagine a future where we, rats, are the dominant species. We rule with gracious authority. We bring everything down to ground level, returning the world to what it once was. Flat. Welcoming. Everything within reach.
Side note: We are keeping the pizza makers. If there are any pizza artisans in the pit—or donut makers for that matter. Or if you’re good with bagels while we’re at it—raise your hand.
I, Werner, imagine a future where we are bold in our affliction. Ratisse, our most famous rat painter, imagines a world where we make art, not mess. Our most famous rat philosopher, Rato, has long said that if we imagine ourselves to be unaffected by your actions, your words, your past histories, we will be unaffected. That it is a choice we make in the moment.
Imagine that.
We COULD continue to imagine ourselves to be unaffected by your actions, as we have done for many years. Or, we COULD just throw you in the pit. So that’s what we’re doing. Good luck!
They say the key to knowing if you have imagination is the ability to imagine a world that does not exist. We have imagined this bold new world and it is a world without humans.
Or is it?
Is this real?
Are you imagining this very moment?
Are we imagining each other?
Is the rat imagining the revolution or is the revolution imagined by the human, in a bedroom, staring into space?
Bum. Lowlife. Snitch. Scumbag. Heel. Scoundrel. Stoolie. Squealer. Informant. Living in a rat race. Hair like a rat’s nest. Faster than a rat up a drainpipe.
Rat rat rat.
Am I real? Are you? Is this moment imagined or existing? Have we imagined ourselves from A to B and this is now C?
Am I the rat at the podium or am I the human in the pit?
Rat-a-tat.
I tap my imaginary baton against the edge of your perception.
This is the riddle of the rat.
Yours in tiny thought,
Janeen
Go behind the scenes and see inspirations for this post👇
This week’s amends…
"What does the money machine eat? It eats youth, spontaneity, life, beauty and above all it eats creativity. It eats quality and shits out quantity. There was a time when the machine ate in moderation…and what it ate was replaced. Now the machine is eating faster…much faster than it can be replaced… The machine is eating it all."- William S. Burroughs
On Rotation: “I think I smell a Rat” by The White Stripes
Loves me some stop motion. Loves me some “how it was made” videos even more. You can also read more about it here.
Via It’s Nice That
It got stuck on some rocks in the end so they couldn’t move it any farther, but wow, so much life on it. Full story >
Shameless Podcast Plug
Listen to audio versions of early issues of The Stream on my podcast, Field of Streams, available on 👉 all major podcasting platforms 👈
Here’s Apple