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Comment by hilbert42 | Hacker News Reader

"Most people in Alberta had never been in contact with rats and did not know what they looked like or how to control them."

Uh 'Most'!?

What!? Amazing to think there was or is any place in earth except say Antarctica where rats were so few and far between that people didn't even know what they looked like.

Have none of them ever read Kenneth Grahame's children's book The Wind in the Willows and seen various drawings and depictions of Ratty?

Strikes me as gross exaggeration and hyperbole, even if they'd never seen a rat in real life (which is pretty hard to believe) then it's even harder to believe they'd never seen a photograph or drawing of one.

For obvious reasons I daren't venture here any further.

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I grew up on a farm in Saskatchewan, and have never seen a rat in my life. I've seen plenty of mice, and I've seen a handful of rat traps, but I've never actually seen a rat.

And I grew up on a farm in the 90s, no TV, no video games. I was outside shooting pellet guns, catching snakes, feeding kittens, riding dirt bikes my whole childhood. No rats.

"I grew up on a farm in Saskatchewan,… …outside shooting pellet guns, catching snakes, feeding kittens, riding dirt bikes my whole childhood. "

I had a similar outdoors childhood in a town of about 10k people in a mountainous area about 70 miles from the State's capital city. You can never explain to those who've not experienced growing up that way about how wonderful it is.

One exception however, catching snakes was a no-no for this reason: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_brown_snake (read the fine print about how venomous it is).

I accidentally stepped on one when I was about 14 and luckily I'm still here. I was running along a bush track and turned into a right-angle bend and the snake—which was out of sight round the bend—was sunning itself in the middle of the track and I couldn't pull up in time—and squish!

The snake shot off in one direction and I did the fastest back-flip in my life in the other direction. I was trembling with fright for about ten minutes after that.

"… No rats."

Perhaps you shouldn't advertise the fact that Saskatchewan is ratless as you might have an influx of migrants (of the human kind that is).

On second thoughts, the last time I was in Saskatchewan (over two decades ago) it was so cold I may as well have been in Antarctica.

Perhaps rats are smarter than we think. Being in 'Antarctica' is just a bit out of their comfort zone.

BTW, I used to keep white rats and mice as pets when I was a kid (they were fun, I used to leave their cage doors open so they could roam and they'd return after exploring).

So you'd see rats as a kid? Honestly I don't even know how big/scary they are. I feel like I'd find them frightening.

Only harmless Gardiner snakes here. My dad always hated em tho. His childhood house was infested with em.

There's mountain lions roaming the plains here and they are scary AF. I find them even scarier here because you can see them from a long ways away, and you can tell when they are stalking you. It's safer, because you can see em and they know you see em, but it's scary when it's following you from 500M away.

And yeah, it's extremely cold here. Cold here today. It gets colder here than in the Arctic some parts of winter. It's life threatening. There's a kind of fear of nature present with everyone for about 4 months every year, November - February.

In the US, northern Idaho and Montana are beautiful, people in the states are sleeping on that part of their country.

The best part about growing up on a farm was probably watching my dad wake up every day at 5 and work until sunset with no boss and only his own brain and braun.

Really made me a fiercely independent person.

This section of the linked article was in the context of the 1950s prior to the introduction of this invasive species of rat to Alberta. So, yes, at that point in time nobody had been exposed to them, because they didn't exist there.

I wasn't allowed to watch Muppet's Christmas Carol as an Albertan child due to the presence of Rizzo the Rat.

Why on earth not? What terrible horrors did your parents think would befall you if you watched Rizzo?

Except for fleeting glimpses I never watched the Muppet Show so Rizzo is only a name to me.

Also check my reply to nightowl_games about being cold. Reckon during one visit to Calgary I was even colder (damn freezing in fact). No wonder rats don't want to live in Alberta. :-)

I was being mostly facetious, I was absolutely allowed to watch that cinematic gem, and yes Alberta can get damn cold. I live farther north than Calgary and grew up even further north than that.

i grew up in alberta and i coupdnt tell you if a rodent i see on the coast is a mouse or a rat.

its definitely not a prarie dog or a chipmunk

What about cockroaches, especially the American species? Here on the other side of Pacific especially in summer months they drive me nuts.

If someone were to observe me waking down the street in the early evening they'd likely see me suddenly start jumping wildly around as if playing hopscotch. It's sort of a game to see how many I can squish during one trip.

Still live here. For the last 40 years. And haven't ever seen a rat. Now mice is a different story. Dont often see them running around but dang it, by the amount of mouse shite in my parked RV over winter, there are a ton of them. They poop EVERYWHERE.

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