This week's theme: Rats

Humans and rats have always shared living space so it makes sense that rats have figured in the stories we've told for thousands of years. And they aren't picky. They make appearances in all genres of story telling. Some of these rats aren't particularly appealing, but some of them are the characters we root for. E.B. White and Kenneth Grahame created Templeton, Stuart Little and Ratty for their well loved books "Charlotte's Web", "Stuart Little", and "Wind and the Willows". Camus' "La Peste" and Lovecraft's "The Rats In the Walls" present less affectionate portrayals of the members of genus Rattus. From around 500 BCE and Aesop's Fables, to the late Medieval period's "The Pied Piper of Hamelin", all the way up to the 21st Century's "Ratatouille, the results of our creativity have included the rat.