Stowaway: A Guest Post by Joe Shute

Separating truth from fiction, Joe Shute dives into the mysteries of one of the world’s most misunderstood animals. Fascinating and enlightening, this book explores rats and the surprising ways our lives are intertwined. Read on for an exclusive essay from Joe on writing Stowaway.

Where is it that we learn disgust? Is the visceral loathing we feel for some creatures inherent within us, or something we are taught over time?

These are the questions that prompted me to write my book Stowaway: The Disreputable Exploits of the Rat. As a writer and lover of nature, I am intrigued, in particular, by the term ‘vermin’, and why some things on this earth are deemed more palatable than others.

In writing the book I also wanted to interrogate some of my own deepest fears, because I too am terrified by rats. Or at least, I was… The after-dark shock encounters on city streets, the urban legends of ‘rat kings’ and sewers teeming with their malevolent force, the sight of a serpentine tail slithering behind a litter bin, had all left their mark. But as is so often the case, fear brings fascination in equal measure.

And so, I decided to delve into the secret world of rats. I quickly learned when researching the book that despite being our closest companion on earth, we know startlingly little about how rats actually live.

Instead I have attempted to take a rat’s-eye view of the world, visiting locations ranging from sub-Saharan Africa to Alberta in Canada to the centre of Paris and remote Scottish islands in order to see rats on their own terms, outside the prism of human bias.

I started writing Stowaway during the Covid-19 pandemic, a time when rats were streaming out of shuttered-up urban centres and into the suburbs. People were also acquiring lockdown puppies to ward off loneliness. My wife and I took a different approach, buying two young rat pups, Molly and Ermintrude, to come and live in our home. 

While known as ‘fancy rats’ due to their variegated fur; otherwise they are exactly the same species as the rodents you might spot raiding a restaurant bin for a slice of pizza.

Spending time in their company revealed just how misunderstood rats truly are. Our rats were deeply affectionate, loving to be tickled and stroked. Their favourite game, meanwhile, was playing hide and seek, scampering up and down the stairs. In laboratory experiments rats have been recorded uttering high frequency giggles as they play that are inaudible to the human ear.

Other studies have shown that despite their maligned reputation, rats are imaginative, creative – even dreaming in their sleep and dancing to music – and altruistic enough to place themselves in great peril to save a fellow stricken rodent.

Did you know that rats can drive cars? Or that in Tanzania a project has trained rats to successfully sniff out land-mines and locate survivors in the rubble of earthquakes.

Writing this book has opened up to me not just the entirely unexpected — and often delightful — world of rats, but also the possibilities of how in the future we might coexist more harmoniously with our ancient enemy.