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![New York has introduced rubbish bins to reduce the rat population](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2024/07/10/TELEMMGLPICT000370364661_17206299924600_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqLFvFcbCCSSPOPEZoCZQZEkikPYR0xYwuEBLwP9UFqPg.jpeg?imwidth=680)
There must be a piece of ancient evolutionary wiring in the human brain that can identify a rat without even really seeing it. I was walking down our hallway, carrying a tower of newly-folded laundry, when I registered a skittering movement to my left. Something slick and brown and dismayingly large, running into the cupboard containing my children’s toys. And in its wake, a smell of sewage so dense as to be almost visible – a cartoon cloud of greenish, fly-blown pong.
According to the pest control man who arrived a few hours later, you can tell when a rat has swum up through the sewers because it leaves brown streaks wherever it touches the walls. That, and the stench. London rats are absolute thugs, he says: big and athletic and totally fearless. They can swim up into toilet bowls, pushing open the lids with their noses. They can squeeze through the outflow pipe behind a dishwasher, nibble through lead and aluminium, and make mincemeat of all the plastic plumbing hidden behind the skirting boards.
Horrifying though all this is (and incredibly expensive to fix), I find myself unable to resist a touch of admiration. London’s wildlife – which largely means its pest-life – occupies this city far more effectively than we humans do. There are nine million people in London, compared with roughly 19 million rats, three million pigeons and half a million mice. Tens of thousands of foxes now live in the capital – considerably more per square metre than in some rural areas. Even seagulls, which are in precipitous decline elsewhere in the country, are thriving in London.
It is a measure of human solipsism, and animal stealth, that despite being so comprehensively outnumbered by verminous beasts, we Londoners are always surprised to see one. A couple of weeks ago, as I ate my breakfast while gazing blankly into the back garden, a fox hopped over the wall. It had a chicken in its mouth – a live, feathered chicken, no doubt pilfered from some Hackney bohemian trying to live like a peasant. It stared insolently at me, all handsome and red like a fox in a children’s book, and then trotted on towards wherever it has made its invisible home.
The mayor of New York has announced a plan to combat the city’s rat problem by introducing wheelie bins. Declaring a “revolution”, Eric Adams promised: “This is a rat-proof container and it is going to do the job.” His optimism is touching, but deluded: London’s rats mastered the wheelie bin two decades ago. Vermin are the real city slickers; we humans have merely adapted to live alongside them.
Right as rain
Apparently this is not the worst summer in British history – just a fairly bad one. We are predisposed to remember only the sunniest summers of our past, according to the neuroscientist Jon Simons, not least because they are unusual. This “rosy retrospection” means we expect better weather than we are likely to get.
The good thing about always holidaying in Devon is that such self-deceptions are impossible. Over the course of 20 Devon summers, I can only remember once thinking: “Phew, it’s almost too hot.” In fact, this is partly why we keep going back.
Abroad is nearly always too hot; scarily so, what with the droughts and wildfires and deaths by heatstroke. A mild English drizzle, by contrast, makes beautiful landscapes that can safely be walked through. I think you could call that “rosy anticipation”.
Rats rule our cities. We’ve just adapted to live alongside them
Sorry, Eric Adams, rats won’t be put off by wheelie bins. Vermin are the real city slickers