June 1- 7, 2006
City Beat : Philly Blunt
Of Rats and Men
For about an hour, the elementary school art teacher and I had been chitchatting in her South Philly living room. It was a nice place. And Pandolfi was as polite, and hygienic, as could be. It wasn’t her aura, or the condition of her row house, that had me fiending for a new, unsullied layer of skin.
Rather, it was seven of her pets, two of which ironically shared names with my first girlfriend and the last gal I dated before I met the bride.
You see, they were rats. (Not the exes, the pets.)
And I absolutely loathe rats. (In comparison, Indiana Jones seems like a charter member of the Asp of the Month Club.)
I told Pandolfi this a few days before we met. In no uncertain terms, I explained, these abominations you consider cute and cuddly prove that God’s imperfect. Look at their beady little eyes and repulsive, hairless tails! If every last one disappeared from the sewer-face of the earth, the world would be a better place.
Pandolfi was a good sport. As the self-proclaimed “Rat Chick”some California gal had previously staked her claim to “Rat Lady”she’s heard it all before. And more often than not, in the course of her rat-rescue mission, she dispels “the myths” about her favorite rodents. She adopted her first rats some two decades agoduring her “punk rock” daysand once hosted 40 that she rescued from medical experiments. Through her “Rat Chick Rat Rescue & Advocacy Group,” she’s turned rat haters into rat lovers. So, delving into my psyche for some repressed horrornone was foundthat’s what she tried to do with me. “This is good for you,” Pandolfi said in a shrink’s tone, as she let a couple rats scurry out of their cage, which sits on an end table right next to her couch.
When she realized I wasn’t having any of it, she attacked the logic of my megaphobia.
“People say they’re dirty and ugly, but it’s just not true,” she said. “It hurts my feelings when people talk about rats like that.”
I meant no offense, but just can’t concur that rats get as bum a deal as exists in the pest, er, animal kingdom. No deep explanation needed. They just freak me out.
They’re hardly the walking, squealing bubonic-plague scatterers they’ve been made out to be, Pandolfi responded. Pet rats, she testified, are cleaner than your dog, cats and, probably, you. They’re loyal, friendly companions and worthy of our respect, as evidenced by the “Firemen Please Save My Pet Rats” sticker on her front door.
She agreed that sewer rats shouldn’t be domesticated. Even the pet ones already have a tendency to gnaw through furniture and steal everything from cigarettes to the TV listings. Still, she couldn’t help but offer a defense of their filthy, feral brethren.
“You’d be pretty dirty too,” she said, “if you lived in a sewer.”
Touché. (And a good thing she didn’t see the crack den I lived in during college.)
Yeah, I was starting to respect Pandolfi’s passion, so I asked what it’s like trying to win people over on behalf of the rats of the world. “People think I’m crazy,” she said, but extolling the virtues of rats “is like being the only sane person in a room full of crazy people.”
Well call me crazy, but I was nothing short of skeeved out as Pandolfi made her case while the exes ran up and down her arms and legs. Their beady little eyes were trained on my side of the couch. I did everything I could to emit a scent that declared, “Stay away from me, you stump-legged minions of hell.” It didn’t work.
One couldn’t wait to scurry behind me, brush against the small of my back and send shivers throughout my body. Then, as I tried to twitch the feeling away, desperately scrambling to tuck my T-shirt in, Pandolfi sucker-punched me.
“Smell how clean it is,” she said, holding one up to where my nose would be when I turned around. Its foul rat hair tickled all the way to my brain’s hate center. As it bared its teeth in what I suppose was a rat smile, I felt dirty. Then again, she had to know that’s the only way to get me to realize all rats don’t smell like three-year-old raw meat.
Granted, I still can’t fathom what kind of demand forced Pandolfi to move her fourth annual Fab Rat Festival, a rescue fundraiser, from a small pet shop to a companion-animal megastore. (It’s Friday night, at the PetSmart near 23rd Street and Oregon Avenue.) But even if she can’t understand my rat hatred, I finally realized some good might come out of her odd choice in pets.
“Like with any other prejudice, what you think about rats is unfounded,” said Pandolfi, who uses the vermin to teach her students about acceptance. “By the end, the kids are telling me they like the rats! Maybe it will help them do the same thing with people.”
