HOLLY CULP
Opinions Editor
A rat is found in Calgary and they automatically blame Saskatchewan.
How typical. It’s so convenient for Alberta to blame their now marred reputation as a rat-free province on Swift Current’s rat infestation.
The CBC coverage of the rat found in Calgary includes photographs of bylaw officers treating the alleyway in Calgary’s Coventry Hills like a crime scene.
As an avid anti-rat activist I have to say I have no pity for the rat. It was behind enemy lines. I have more pity for the people of Alberta who lie awake at night in fear.
The CBC article also shows a picture of the captured Calgary rat in a plastic bag. Naturally the image has made animal rights activists express regret that the animal did not have the opportunity to find a loving home. How sad.
Alberta has not really considered that upholding the reputation or being rat-free 100 per cent of the time is unrealistic.
I’m wondering how, if the rat is from Swift Current, it ended up in Calgary. Sure, it could have hopped into a boxcar or semi-trailer and been transported there, but it is safe to say the rat was maliciously planted in plain sight to discredit Alberta as a province devoid of rats.
Growing up in Alberta I was proud to say that I lived in a rat-free province. I would boast to my out-of-province relatives that I was living in a clean province while they lived in a filthy rat-infested purgatory.
I imagined rat patrols: rat police with guns and tear gas at the border violently turning rats away.
As I grew older, I realized that a rat patrolling police force was ridiculous and began to adopt the belief that rats just simply could not live in Alberta; the elevation was too high and they preferred to live at sea level. When I moved to Saskatchewan, I extended this belief to include Saskatoon.
Since then I have come to regard rats as mythical beings that only exist in Disney movies and areas overrun with immorality and rain, like New York.
Now, that beautiful and promising vision of a rat-free province has been destroyed thanks to Swift Current. The rats have penetrated Saskatchewan and all it takes is one lousy rat for Alberta to lose its shit.
Alberta needs to educate its citizens about rats. Just because you live in a province with a program in place to eliminate rats does not mean that rats do not exist. Although the rat in Calgary most likely came from Saskatchewan, that doesn’t make it okay to blame everything on us.
You give us acid rain, we give you a rat. Fair is fair.