This is a post about Chiclayo rats or, more
specifically about people’s reactions to a single, stationary lacking-vital-life-signs
rat.
To my knowledge rats are not a problem in
Chiclayo. In over eight years of walking the streets I have seen maybe three
rats. That’s not to say there aren’t rats in Chiclayo. There are several canals
that run through the city that are not well maintained. People throw garbage
into them and shrubbery of all sorts grows in them. Occasionally the city will
divert the water and clean the canals but it’s not long before they revert to a
raw condition. Rats live and breed in these canals. Sometimes young boys with
nothing better to do can be seen with sticks chasing rats. The rats usually
win.
Perhaps that is where this rat came from. I
don’t know the circumstances of its demise…whether it was killed or just happened
to die in the middle of the sidewalk, but there it was when I woke up this
morning. Dogs roam the streets during the day but I doubt if they would mess around
with a rat. Cats take over the streets at night and it is likely that one or
two cats came across this rat either dead or alive. Perhaps all those cartoons
I watched as a kid are wrong…maybe cats don’t eat rats.
Anyway, I was curious to see how
Chiclayanos would react to the unfortunate creature, so settling at a window
with coffee and camera I attempted to document their reactions.
About a third of the people stayed on the
sidewalk and ignored the rat, some men even nonchalantly stepping over it,
though most of them walked to one side. Those in this group tended to be older
people.
Another third thought it prudent to get off
the sidewalk. This group was evenly divided between men and women; old and
young.
Some weren’t sure what to do so contemplated
the situation for a moment…from a safe distance. 
Of course it goes without saying that you
never…ever push a person in a wheel chair over or near to a rat.
The remaining third was the fun group…their
reaction to the rat was not nonchalant. Perhaps I’m being sexist, but in this
group as I expected women’s reactions were generally more animated than men’s. The
panic reaction was mostly limited to younger women...
…though men were not immune to it.
Did you ever wonder why our hands fly to
our face when we’re startled? I never thought about it until I noticed that I
had three photos of women doing that.
I call this the whoa reaction, where you
stop and take a step back while trying to get your wits together. Apparently
dogs react the same way.
The woman on the left is in a
really serious whoa reaction. I
was too late with my camera to catch the double whoa when the woman on the
right saw the rat.
I kept expecting a man to come along and
kick the rat into the street. That’s what I would have done. I looked out the
window just now and see that someone has moved the rat against the building. I
wonder why they did that instead of into the street.
I've thought of doing exactly the same thing with litter. Unlike a rat (though yours was dead) litter cannot attack and we all know that unless someone picks it up, it will stay there forever. I've become convinced that people simply don't perceive litter as they go on their way.
ReplyDeleteI did have an interesting experience once when I picked up some litter along a street. A man, either Pakistani or Indian, jumped out of a cab that was standing nearby and praised my act saying "it is so good to see a man like you doing that!" A man like me? Did this refer to my race? I was wearing jeans, so it wasn't as if I was wearing a suit to indicate wealth. I don't know.
Hi Clif…thanks for commenting.
DeleteIn my experience Chiclayanos do not pick up litter, though it is common every morning to see women sweeping the sidewalk in front of their houses and collecting any litter in the gutter. Also, there is a noticeable trend toward less littering, particularly among younger people.
In my opinion there are two main reasons for litter in Chiclayo’s streets. One is the ‘recyclers’ who prowl the streets in the late night-early morning hours, tearing open trash bags looking for something they can sell. Second is city government’s inability to efficiently collect trash. Often it will sit for days and the bags will get torn open intentionally or otherwise. In both cases Chiclayo’s notorious wind distributes the contents.
Tom