Athena & Apollo
There’s a lot to love about Duchess, the snowy owl who’s been hanging out around Union Station. She’s gorgeous, for one thing, and there’s something about her presence at the train station that seems to convey that any moment now, she’s going to burst into the human-esque form of a Grecian goddess. “Athena?” the photographers might say, lowering their lenses in a moment of respect — except for that one guy who always keeps clicking no matter what. There’s always that guy. He drives me crazy. I guess he also gets the shot.
Maybe it’s all the marble around her, the statues that she already appears to preside over.
Check out Freedom’s feathers — she has a few extra. Freedom tops the U.S. Capitol. Source: The Architect of the Capitol.
All I know is that I’ve gotten more questions from out-of-towners about Duchess than I have about any other animal I’ve written about so far.
Other falcons, perhaps hoping to cash in on their slice of the publicity pie, have also started showing up around town.
There’s been a red tailed hawk or two around the Senate side for years, but there seem to be more of them about than usual this year. The Washington Monument is the permanent home to a peregrine falcon, but lately, bald eagles — bald eagles! — have been spotted on a neighborhood roof.
Either these are some wildly publicity-seeking birds — I mean, the Real Housewives of Your Treetops of Birds — or they’re here for the food, and most specifically for the rats, which Captiol Hill has in abundance, particularly right now.
(I actually have several photos & videos of real, live city rats from around Capitol Hill. Those rats don’t look like this, but I figure each one is probably worth at least four or five subscribers. So instead, you’re getting this super-cute pet rat (I’m guessing) from iStock. You’re welcome! Source: Pakhnyushchyy via iStock.)
Normally, rats are nocturnal, and they don’t like to venture out very far from their nests.
Rats, it turns out, are not really very adventurous. In New York, they’ve mapped the genetics, and there’s an uptown population and a downtown population, and then kind of a buffer population around midtown, and all the rats kind of stay in the neighborhoods where they were born. (How very New York of them!)
Fordham University, in a multi-year project looking into the genetics of the New York rat population, found that the genetics follow the north-south compass of the sewer and subway lines. Once a rat has established her nest, she doesn’t like to venture far — maybe a maximum of about 600 feet away — and she develops a taste for the foods that are available nearby. If she was born in Koreatown, she loves banchan. If she grew up in Italian neighborhoods — well, I’m guessing that’s where pizza rat came from.
(One more thing about Fordham University: to celebrate the achievement of the scientists, they sponsored an art show of street art featuring street rats, which I think is fabulous.)
At any rate, along with keeping to their neighborhoods, rats also like keeping to a pretty set schedule: sleep during the day time, venture out for food, mating, and socializing at night.
(How much socializing does a rat do? I’m not sure, but it does turn out that rats have empathy that leads to helping activity — what’s termed “pro-social behavior” -- so I’m guessing they do practice some form of socializing.
Scientists tested rats’ empathy by introducing them to each other and then trapping one of the rats. The free rat then worked to free their trapped friend by opening the door to the cage. If the cage was empty or had a stuffed rat inside, the free rat would figure that out and would stop trying to open the door, but if the cage contained a live friend-rat, they would keep trying to open the door for their friend. Even more remarkably, the free rat would *share their chocolate chips* with the trapped rat about half the time. I’m not convinced most adult humans would share their chocolate chips with a trapped friend. Heck, I’m not convinced *I* would share my chocolate chips. Note to self: make a rat friend before getting trapped anywhere.*)
Where was I? Oh, yeah, rats normally being nocturnal *except* lately, there’s been a pandemic. Which, as you’ve all doubtless noticed, has caused certain shifts in human behavior: two years ago, we suddenly shut down restaurants. One day, tons of trash left out on the streets every night; the next day, nothing. And then the next day, nothing again. And so on.
This began to take a toll on our local anti-pets, the rats.
I listened to a podcast recently with Bobby Corrigan, Urban Rodentologist. If I’m a little in love with rats recently, I’m totally in love with Bobby.
According to Cornell University’s press release for the Excellence in Integrated Pest Management Award:
“Enchanted from childhood by the story of iconic oceanographer Jacques-Yves Cousteau, Corrigan enrolled at the State University of New York at Farmingdale with one dream: to be the next Cousteau. That changed the day biology professor Austin Frishman was a substitute teacher. So riveting was that one class that Corrigan immediately switched majors to Frishman’s specialty — pest management.”
I listened to Bobby on a podcast, Ologies with Alie Ward, and he claimed that going into the sewers of NY looking for rats isn’t as spooky as it sounds. There’s enough air flow that you don’t smell the sewage — well, not too badly — and it’s not like you see masses of rats everywhere. “You know, a mammal’s a mammal, whether it’s a whale in the ocean or a rat in a sewer. To me, being a nature nerd, I just said, ‘Holy cow! There’s these animals that live in the pitch black down here, completely, but yet they know their way around. They communicate. I see them nuzzling each other…’ So it was all, to me, super cool.”
When humans changed their behavior due to the pandemic, the rats felt it. And even today, though many restaurants are open again, they might have different hours than they used to. They might do more take out or delivery business than they used to. Or — a boon to the off-schedule rats willing to miss a little sleep for some daytime eating — they might offer sidewalk eateries.
Whatever we’re doing, the rats — just as they’ve been doing for their entire evolutionary period — are watching us. Observing. Trying to get close, but not too close. Taking advantage, but not getting caught.
And just as we might change the rats’ behavior with our reaction to the pandemic, maybe the rats change the falcons’ behavior. Maybe it’s a whole string and we are, every day, in all our actions, interwoven with the wild whether we know it or not.
Maybe Athena, goddess of the owl, and Apollo, lord of the mice (close enough), watch over us, very closely, all through the night, and all through the day.
* OMG, another article in which rats give up chocolate to help out a friend. Seriously, if choosing between rats and humans in terms of ethical development, I think the rats might have it.
One last cool experiment: DeepSqeak, an attempt to record and analyze rodent sounds. Basically, an attempt to understand rodent vocal communication. Wouldn’t it be amazing if they somehow created a rodent Rosetta Stone?
Haha. Deepsqeak. Haha!
There is a nasty side to rats, particularly males attacking young, but there is also a sweet side. I had a few feeder rats as pets and they are quite affectionate, they make good pets. This was a great read, as usual.