What You Don't Know Can Hurt You

This morning I saw a news item of a young boy who died after being around his pet rat. He contracted Rat's Bite Fever, a disease carried by rats that can be transferred to humans. In fact, the disease can be carried by any rodent.  When I think about my children and grandchildren and their gerbils, guinea pigs, and rats as pets, I cringe. If I had known then what I learned this morning watching the program, I would never had allowed them to have "rodent" like pets!

Easy to take care of first pets for my daughter were two male gerbils. We got them a wheel and the proper food. It just so happened that they were not two males and had a bunch of reddish-purple babies.  When the gerbil parents began eating their young, I got rid of them by taking them to an animal shelter.

My son had black-faced rats and they would crawl all over him, sit on his head, and he would feed them by hand. I would not allow the animals in the upstairs part of the house and they "lived" in their cages on the landing between the basement and the upstairs. A door to the patio near where the rats lived, had curtains hanging down about six inches from the rats. Somehow, the rats managed to reach the curtains and before long, the bottom part of the curtains were completely shredded by the rats. I hated the animals. Not only were they destructive but they smelled.

One day, I glanced at the cage. A pair of beady eyes followed every move I made. They were silent and just stared at me. The claws, which look very much like human hands, clung to the wires of the cage. I had a feeling that the rats knew what I was thinking. They frightened me.

Not too long after that spooky morning, I convinced my son to get rid of the rats. I don't recall how we got rid of those evil looking rats but it was a relief to have them gone.

If I had known about Rat Bite Fever, I never would have purchased rodent like pets for my children. So I guess the saying What You Don't Know Can't Hurt You is not true.  Because it can!

"A squirrel is just a rat

with a cuter outfit."

Sarah Jessica Parker