Ratmas

Ho ho ho!

Merry Ratmas!

Merry Ratmas, one and all.

Has Father Ratmas been?

Boy, what day is this?

Why, it's Ratmas

at Ratmas time.

Think about rats and we cherish rats.

Cause in a world of rats, you can put your hands around a rat.

Squeeze a rat tonight.

It's breakfast time.

Thousand driver rats.

Then drive over another rat.

If you kill a rat, three rats sprout out of its severed neck cavity.

There's a rat outside your window.

And it definitely will eventually get in.

Because you can't outthink the rats.

Ratmas tat.

Welcome to Ratmas, one and all.

Welcome to Ratmas.

Welcome.

You've enjoyed Christmas.

That was fine.

Of course it was fine.

Yeah.

But now it's time for the real celebration of the year.

Yeah.

Yeah, the side of the coin.

Which is the side of a chocolate coin.

Yeah.

A partially chewed chocolate coin.

Because

there isn't just a jolly bearded man going up and down your chimney at Christmas, is there?

There's hundreds of rats going up and down your chimney, up and down all your pipes, through your eyes, connecting you.

I'm going to navigate

every single chimney, every single time.

It's a holly, jolly rat mercy.

It's a ratmurz, ratmas time.

For me, I sort of think that it won't get old to me changing the songs of Christmas songs from Christmas to Ratmus.

I could do an hour of that.

I'm dreaming of a white rat on ratmus merch because white rats have the highest social status amongst the rats.

There I'll be no rats with little pink eyes.

They're freaky, freaky little rats.

And they'll shit in your air fryer.

You know what?

It wasn't a rat, but I think it was a mouse, but I once

made a terrible discovery once.

Now, I have to take you back to the Baron's Court days.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Infestations in Baron's Court.

They didn't count as infestations.

They were non-paying

tenants.

They were just part of the system.

So picture the scene, open bin.

Yeah.

We previously talked, just to explain if people haven't heard that.

I talked about it recently.

You lived in a flat where you had an open bin policy.

You had a bin bin policy.

Instead of having the flappy top, you took that off so it was easier to throw teabags in.

That's right.

And more hygiene it because because nothing, because grime couldn't adhere to the lid if there is no lid.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We also had a bathroom with constantly wet, dripping, slowly dripping paint.

Gathering like stained glass windows gather over centuries, you know, and get sort of

fatter at the bottom.

Get fatter at the bottom.

That's happening with the walls.

But something I haven't talked about, I don't think, was, or maybe I have, was the time when I went into the kitchen in the morning one day

and was presented with a kind of weird, like sort of locked door sort of Proro mystery,

which was there was there was a loaf of bread which had been left out.

Again, for hygiene reasons,

it was cleaner outside of the fridge,

generally.

Also, don't fridge your bread.

Don't fridge your bread.

You don't fridge your bread, do you?

Very rare.

You just nail it to the wall.

So it's out of the reach of all but the very, very tallest of the rats.

Obviously, you have to pay the tall rats their tithe.

otherwise they'll drink your uh your contact lens fluid

so so yeah so so there was a loaf of bread out but but um

but next so so but basically the loaf of bread looked like the equivalent of a you know um you know a packet of biscuits if you take all the biscuits out

re-inflate the packet

leave it on a sideboard you've got an excellent pre-internet sort of bit of entertainment when a friend comes in and thinks the biscuits are full yeah have you know know that one?

Sure.

Yeah, it's good, clean, analogue fun.

Nowadays, of course, you just do a TikTok of

something to do with biscuits, don't you, instead?

Yeah,

presumably.

You just vapor biscuit on TikTok.

You just vapor biscuit.

Yeah.

And it's probably like a special Japanese illustrated biscuit with cool, with like really cute looking eyes on

that dances around singing a song that you don't understand.

Have you been on TikTok?

I think you've imagined a much better thing than that actually.

I know TikTok, it's actually families, isn't it, in a kitchen dancing?

They go da-da-da-da-da, and they click their hands and they're all wearing swimwear and they dance more and more.

And they're all wearing sort of matching pajamas and stuff.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, but that's TikTok, isn't it?

Yeah.

I think so.

I'm not on it, but.

Email in, let us know what it is.

Anyway, so it's like someone done that thing done with the biscuits with bread.

So essentially, all of the bread was out.

It was just the crust.

Essentially.

essentially and it was one it was like a quite a squared off loaf so you're looking for a rat with straight hair

why would that be the case well because the crusts keep your curls don't they you get curly hair if you eat crusts oh good point yes mike

you know that i don't have any hair related wisdom i i've i've never stored it because it's not

that's just a little side jibe isn't it that was just a little a little veiled dig at me for being bald man wasn't it i'm just saying if you if you were to spot a a a rat with a with a lot lovely, luscious, bouncy curls, you know that's not your culprit.

That's not my culprit.

By the way, is there any other sort of hair lore and wisdom you'd like to share in front of me, perhaps about how rubbing lime into your head makes you

that was your first mistake?

That is the main

function of rubbed lime with men in their 20s.

That builder lime.

It's the wrong kind of lime.

I was going for a Shane-worn sort of like beach effect.

Yeah.

And then I just added crean soap, which made it worse.

Tried to take the whole thing off with

a builder's wrench.

Just took off the top layer of skin.

I had to have a skin transplant.

And the pebble dashing really finished you off.

But by then, it was too late.

You wouldn't listen to anybody.

It was too late.

That sounds pretty traumatic, Henry.

Although what they left you behind with is the perfect bread bowl to fill it with sort of meat and eggs, whatever.

You know,

that's true or a vase a vase for for

a vase for the for the naturally occurring flora in the Barons Court flat exactly or no bread vase but for once a vase which you know mirrors the ephemeral beauty of a flower because it eventually goes off goes

you know doesn't last forever like that's part of the beauty of flowers isn't it I've never seen a loaf wilt

it's not often you see that but but no so it was more surreal than that so it was the empty loaf still squared off.

This was before rough-hewn sourdoughs were trendy.

It was very much,

your breads were, you could measure them with a...

It was a breeze block.

It was a breeze block of bread.

It was like a stack of...

It was like an ancient construction unit.

Exactly.

You could absolutely stack them.

You could build a solid, you know, with the right angles, without even needing any creosote, you could build a...

a functioning bridge, couldn't you, that would

sustain two or three chariots, wasn't it?

You know, those old bridges that don't have any creosote on.

So anyway, yeah, so the next, so yeah, it was, it was in the days of really, really square Brad.

And next to it, but next to it was a pile, a huge pile of breadcrumbs.

It was just the most surreal, it was like a really horrifying sight because it was so weird.

So a huge pile, like a pyramid of breadcrumbs,

and an empty

bread vase on its side.

Pure crust.

So the most delicate, you know,

Loaf of bread you could imagine with no innards just just the outside just the skin

Maintaining its shape and this huge was there a trail of breadcrumbs?

Was there anything to

there was no clue to follow you but you didn't find yourself following the trail into the space between the walls and into the rat kingdom?

I thank God I didn't because

that was that was what they were trying to get me to do.

It was a trap

Although I would be king of the rats now, so to be fair, it's swings and roundabouts.

Do you know what I mean?

I wouldn't be podding.

I would have 58

admittedly horrific wives.

Over 100,000 children.

So this time, yeah.

This time he'd be a nightmare.

Are you sure Wasrats are not some sort of conceptual artist?

Well, he's talking about my flatmate at the time.

I wouldn't get past him.

I mean,

it was a creative flat.

It was one of those flats where none of us were earning any money.

We were all being creative.

Oh, it's Boho.

It was Boho.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

It was, yeah, it was like, yeah, sort of 1910s Montmartre, wasn't it?

It really was.

It was an absolute

fermenting creativity.

And tuberculosis.

And tuberculosis.

From the open bin.

From the open bin.

So

I actually, to be fair,

I think it was probably mice.

I think that's something.

And I think what had happened was a mouse had done much more like my childhood gerbil used to do, which was to burrow and make itself a home in the bread.

I think

that's what like gerbils and hamsters do do similar stuff.

So I think it was a mouse had

essentially tried to move into the loaf of bread.

Because,

you know,

certainly in London, that location, location, location, location, location, location, isn't it?

I mean, that loaf of bread was actually probably described as an edible, open plan.

Studio.

Studio apartment.

Yeah.

I know this is slightly off topic, and I know this is Ratmas.

I wish it could be Ratmas every day.

Felice Navirat.

Felice Navirat.

I'm going to wishing you a Mary Ratmus.

Felice Navidad has

crept up on me over the last 10 years, as I think possibly my favourite Christmas.

It's one of my absolute faves.

It's crept up, I think, on Britain.

I don't think it was big 10 years ago.

No.

No.

How is it Spanish soft power at work?

I think it's American soft power.

Is it?

Yeah.

I think so.

Interesting.

I just was going to butt in and say, we had an email, Mike, on the topic of burrowing animals.

Oh, yeah.

Can you pass this on to Bob and Ruth, your next-door neighbours?

Certainly.

Someone else had a tortoise that went missing.

Yeah.

It had burrowed under the earth again.

You told me that one, didn't we?

No, this is a different one.

Really?

So someone said that

they were spading the ground and the spade hit the tortoise, which sounds a bit violent.

They said, What you can do is get the other end of a broom, the handle end of a broom, and just gently poke it into the ground.

Okay, looking for resistance,

the kind of resistance that might be provided by a tortoise.

Oh, that's fine, because I often play sort of minefield search anyway on a Saturday afternoon.

There you go, so I can just incorporate that.

Yeah, it's a bit like identifying a witch in medieval times, isn't it?

It's like, yes, I found, yeah, I found the

next tortoise.

That's why they said gently, just gently

broom into the ground.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, probe for the tortoise.

By the way,

I met a tortoise owner the other day and discussed Egg's case.

Yes.

And

they did confirm that tortoises, you know, their tortoise goes missing all the time for quite extended periods and it's generally buried itself in something.

She also said something which confirmed what you said, Mike, which is they're surprisingly good.

Good climbers.

That begs the question, how surprisingly?

It's pretty surprising.

Well, it depends.

Yeah, but the bar is low, so it's not.

Exactly, yeah.

But they're not like Dracula going up the building.

Have we talked about that?

It's not quite, yeah.

You mentioned that.

It's not quite, yeah, I don't think it's quite the full skitter.

It's not full skitter.

And they don't have the accoutrement of

your human climber.

You've never seen a sort of little tiny bag of chalk.

A tiny bag of chalk bits of rope.

And where possible, they will use the cable car.

have yourself a merry little rat mouse

um full of yuletide claws

um

so jingle bell jingle bell jingle bell rat nice thank you i saw mummy kissing a rat

underneath a hollowed out loaf of bread

by the way i hope you've you've all remembered to leave a loaf of square bread out for the rat.

It's not just Cassandra and the reindeer, is it?

That needs to snack.

For the gravity-defying flying rats, of course, flying rats.

Also, bury some lettuce in your garden in case there's a lost

hungry tortoise

on the loose.

Deck the halls with scores of rat traps.

Excuse me, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap.

Good king ratless last looked out on a load of rats.

I know that this feels like

probably like a very unoriginal comment, but wouldn't it be worth, I've always thought this, like if you had children, I know Mike, it might be too late for you to deploy this.

I've always thought, train one of them to be a goalkeeper.

Anyone can fucking do it.

You've mentioned this so many times.

No one wants to do it.

It's really easy.

You get paid loads of money.

You're very much a sort of single party single issue party i know i would say this is your thing this is your soapbox it's my soapbox and also you can literally pick up the ball the one the one thing that's hard about football you can you literally can pick it up but it's like it's ridiculous okay so that and it's really well paid if you make it big but the other one is i wonder if you should also get a second if you've got a second child get them on writing a christmas song

because again even if you know if all you thought about all the time 10 years 20 years 30 years of your life 35 years,

surely eventually you probably would hit gold.

And you'd have to borrow a lot of money to survive up until that point.

You have to work, everything's on credit, though.

Yeah, it's a hard sell to the bank manager, isn't it?

Yeah.

It is a bit of a hard.

I'm so close.

I'm so close.

It's probably on the list of things they have stuck on the post-it by the laptop to automatic no to, isn't it?

Christmas song author.

And you hand on to the next person when they take off, they take over your job.

You go, by the way, this has saved me so much time i wish i'd had this from the start these post-its

you will get scores of people coming in every day

anyone that says christmas songs yeah yeah um other post-its are um if they're asking for money to to make a cafe where you can also do pottery in it that's

that's pie in the sky

also

the um

the uh the pizza the pizza restaurant idea which happened in actually i may have talked about that before which happened in chiswick which didn't last very long which was a pizza restaurant where Just the crusts.

No, no, it was.

Yeah, to make your hair all curly or not curly or something that I wouldn't understand.

No, it was something to do with

you made the pizza there.

You made it.

Then you owned it.

And then you took it

yourself.

And maybe you cooked it yourself at home, but you made it there or something.

It was such a weird idea.

I still can't really get my head around.

Does that make any sense?

Have you got mixed up with getting a job at Asda behind the pizza counter?

One stealing the pizzas.

No, I've never got that wrong.

I'll come back to that.

Anyway, Ratmas is not about our rat stories.

No.

It's about your rat stories.

No, no, that was it.

Sorry.

This restaurant.

That was.

For me, there, that was a really lovely bit of pleasure.

Going to the cyclist.

Absolutely crapped on.

Sorry, Ben.

What it was was

they delivered the pizza to you and you cooked it in your oven

at home.

So the idea is it was hot.

But obviously your oven is just a shit oven.

It's not a pizza oven.

So you'd be just making quite a low-quality pizza at home.

But it's amazing to think, isn't it?

Those people that try and...

When was the last time that a shop or a restaurant changed the concept of something and it worked?

Does that happen?

Or is it slow evolution, do you think, these things?

Yeah, what was the last revolution?

Well, weirdly, Yo Sushi, which felt very exciting to me when it had the conveyor belts and stuff, yeah, they've stopped doing that now, it's just a normal restaurant, really.

Yeah, take they've taken away all the conveyor belts, but also try getting a good night's sleep in one of those yo hotels because you're just steaming around the

going, Oh, I'm in reception, or here I'm now going through the toilets.

Oh,

it's really knackering.

They do have you,

I mean, I'm saying because they do have yo hotels, don't they?

They do, yeah,

anyway.

So,

ratmas isn't about our rat stories, ratmas isn't about our our rat stories.

It's about your rat stories.

Isn't it?

Yeah.

Good, good, good.

Mike, do you have

a 10-second long rat story from your life so we can all throw in a rat story?

Henry's put in the

logo.

It's not a very recent one.

Okay.

Yeah, here we go.

It's not much of a story.

Pam, like many dogs, likes to sort of occasionally roll in things,

usually gross things, you know, a bit of fox pea, cow pat, that kind of thing.

Lovely.

And we've had a lot of heavy weather recently down by the floodplain, and she was having a real good rummage on something.

And she scampered away from it.

And what she was having a rummage in was

a quite flat, dead, very large rat, water rat, belly up.

Wow.

Oh.

Face in a state of absolute anguish.

Oh.

So she was like a rolling pin making a hideous hit preparing a

little evil

right in the

back rub for Pam.

They do flatten though.

Rats, they say what you like about them is very flat.

They flatten out really

pancake.

They're in a lifetime after that.

Yeah.

And it's a great revenge option, isn't it, on a faux as a

you stick a rat amongst a stack of ordinary American style pancakes.

You stick a rat pank, a rat in there.

Yeah.

And it's a good

it's like 20p in the Christmas pudding.

Yeah, exactly.

The other way

My route story, I've not had a recent one.

When I was a child, I've got a very, very vivid memory of our next-door neighbor, Frank, coming round and knocking on the door, quite fretless or frenzied,

saying to my mother,

I've just seen a, it's your garage.

I've just seen a beaver in your garage.

That's the wrong emotional response.

Shouldn't it be like, I've just seen a beaver in your garage?

it's there.

Although that was before beavers were reintroduced into Britain.

Exactly.

So that would have people have thought it's a spy beaver.

A Russian spy beaver.

Russians are coming.

Oh, God.

They've trained beavers.

Yeah.

They'll stop on nothing.

Yeah.

And he thought he'd seen a beaver creeping into a garage when, in fact, it, of course, was a rat.

Oh, but that gives you a sense of the scale of the beaver.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And the scale of the Nash's as well.

The scale of it.

I've just seen someone who's on his, must be on his way to a Star Wars cosplay.

There's a chewbaca in you.

Oh, my.

Blaming out.

I've just seen someone driving a hairy Hyundai.

I turn into you, Gary.

What?

No, it's.

Hang on.

Hyundai's don't have tails.

Anyway, Ratmus isn't about our rat stories.

So true.

Ratmas is about your rat stories.

Now, before we start, I've been looking through the emails.

A friend of of mine, Michael, said he was going to send in his rat story.

Yeah.

Told me, give me a preview of it.

It was good.

He's not sent it in.

Well, you know what?

I think we have got a rat story there about a rat called Michael.

Why, exactly?

Yeah.

All rats have tails.

Some of them are just gits.

I'll probably see it.

Was on the dating scene.

Met a young lady.

Got on really well.

Went back to her flat.

It was horrible.

Yeah.

Like really messy and dirty and dim.

There's always a catch.

Open bin.

Probably an open bin.

Yeah.

I got them open.

Hang on.

Did he have such a bad time with me that in the middle of the night he went out into the kitchen and tried to move into a loaf of bread?

Tried to escape into an open bed.

Hang on.

Okay.

They conducted sexual congress.

After which he removed the

prophylactic.

God almighty.

It was put to one side, and moments later, he was watching a rat eat his issue.

Oh, Ben, you

were couching that in such nice, neutral language.

You really, you made, you almost made me relax.

I'm sorry, everyone.

I've ruined Ratmus.

You came in hard.

Oh,

yeah.

It's the most wonderful rat of the year.

Holy shit.

Okay.

Let's move on to an actual email.

This is from Miguel.

Miquel?

M-I-Q-U-E-L.

Yeah.

Miquel?

Miquel.

Thanks, Miquel.

Who said he's sending it from Rat City?

Well, that's any city in the world, and every city, isn't it?

Lots of people

would lay claim to that.

Yeah.

Rats know no borders, really, do they?

So this is a story about his wife.

She moved back with a roommate to Chicago, the rat capital of America.

Oh, wow.

That's interesting.

By the way, the rat capital is not always the same as the legislative capital.

As a financial capital.

Often it is, but often it is coming quite confusing.

Yeah.

They lived in a house off an alley.

Off an alley.

Yeah.

Okay, that sounds scary.

One day they noticed a rat in the house and freaked out.

So they called the landlord who found the hole through which the rat had come in and covered it with a metal plate.

Problem solved.

Except my now wife came back home to learn that the landlord had blocked the rat in the house rather than out of the house.

I'm going to say that is always a problem with pest control, with the concept of pest control.

I've had pest controllers come around and do that and talk about blocking things out.

And it's like, it's fine, unless it's inside, in which case you're now living with a rat

for the rest of your life.

Like with a rat.

The rat has to become part of your social clan.

you know.

So, like, yeah, because what are the chances that it's in or out at any one time?

Also,

as we've discussed before, they can get through any crack,

can't they?

Size of a pencil, size of a pencil in a show of valor, she ran out of the back door.

Her roommate came back and checked everywhere for the rat, it was nowhere to be found.

After very careful inspection, he concluded that the rat must have run out through the back door, which my now wife had left open during her strategic retreat.

So, So he grabs his stuff and hops on the bus to work.

Problem solved.

Things are good.

The rat is gone.

Nice music is playing during his commute.

He's tapping his foot along to it.

Backpack on his lap.

Except the song ends, the tapping stops, and the backpack is still bouncing on his lap.

He's found the rat.

What?

It's in his rucksack on the way to work.

Yes.

Fucking ratty.

He's got a rat sack.

He's got a rat.

I did not see that coming.

That is a brilliant switcheroo, great sort of reversal.

It's a lovely bit of storytelling.

Bloody hell, that's a good bit of storytelling.

Does it end there?

There's an epilogue.

Okay.

Epilogue.

He ran out of the bus at the next stop, unzipped the backpack, and threw it as far as he could.

The rat then scurried out of the backpack onto the street, where it was flattened by that same bus.

That's very tidy, isn't it?

On the first day of rats must my true love sent to me a rucksack bouncing on my knee.

This is from Isaac, and it is

entitled Provincial Dad Rat Story.

Dear Beans,

your most recent episode on the Netherlands put out

ah, your most recent episode on the Netherlands put out as easy as it looks, is it, Michael?

Yeah.

you have to add the missing words and things.

Debbings, your most recent episode on the Netherlands put out a request for horror rat content.

This was rather brave.

As a long-time listener, I had to write.

Just this week, I had a rat incident.

As a proud provincial dad, I am also a proud poultry breeder.

I had a broody hen sitting on duck eggs, but only one managed to hatch, sadly.

Sitting on duck eggs?

What sort of sick place is this guy running?

It's not a cross-species eggs.

It'll be a duck hen, Ben.

It'll be a duck hen.

I see, is it?

I'm assuming it's a duckling guy.

He's provincial, so needs must, you know, in the provinces.

However, the ugly duckling was doing quite well for a week until one night, its mum decided to roost rather than sit on the ground on top of her for protection.

Sadly, the small duckling was then exposed, vulnerable, a sitting duck.

She was certainly no match for the family of rats that were living next door.

As this is Australia, our rats are, of course, more vicious, clever, and generally lethal than their European cousins.

The next morning, I found my poor darling duckling's feet at the entry to the rat hole.

That was all they had left of her.

As a provincial dad, I had no other option than to start a full military campaign.

I camped out of the coop for the next few nights in the rain and shot every rat I saw.

All the best.

What an Australian story that is.

That feels

very Russell Crowe somehow.

Because he'd just shot those rats, and no one would have been able to hear the gunshot because he'll live 6,000 miles from

anyone else.

We deal with things ourselves out here.

You understand?

Yeah.

Wearing those feet around

his neck on a necklace.

Yeah.

With all the other feet.

Crock feet.

Ostrich feet.

With the crocodile pet that was eaten by rats.

Yeah, exactly.

He could do that.

By the way, little tip, he didn't, maybe didn't realise this.

Those duck feet, you just plant them in a little bit of soil,

normal soil, a bit of water, give them a good bit of light, and they'll grow into,

well, they'll grow other duck feet off them, and they'll become just sort of senti duck.

They'll become scented, yeah.

A ducky pedee.

They'll become a ducky pede.

But this is Australia.

They can't just use water for these little projects.

This is like June, right?

That's true.

Water is life.

That's true.

They need water to make lager, Henry.

Yeah.

On the second day of rat must, my true love sent to me two duckling feet and a rucksack bouncing on my knee.

A space rat came travelling

on a ship from afar,

constantly pissing,

following a star,

and I said, Rat,

dearest beans, you recently asked for people's rat stories.

I used to be a network engineer.

I was called out to a site where the entire network had gone down.

Not narrowing down any day,

is it?

Supposed to help specify what day it happens, mate, not just me.

Yeah,

um,

it's quite good.

Um,

It's half-hearted.

Yeah.

I was called out to a site where the entire network had gone down.

Sorry.

To gain access to the area in question, I had to take the lid off a chamber and lower myself down into it.

It was just above head height deep.

Okay.

I don't really like spiders, so I was quite on edge.

I took the four screws out of a blanking panel

on the wall

at about chest height yeah as i pulled the panel off i estimate between 75 and 100 rats poured out of the ducting

and hit me in the chest and face

i think we've found our network problem

um

Wow.

Can I say one of the many horrifying things about rats is they are their ability to pour their liquid nature.

They are liquid.

They are basically a liquid, aren't they?

Scientifically.

They will fill a container.

They'll fill a container.

And scientifically, there's no actual way of distinguishing between a rat and a liquid.

It is a liquid.

Scientists can't.

They're exactly the same as a liquid.

Hence, getting through a pen.

Hence getting through a pen, exactly.

They can fit into any space.

They'll pour out of things.

They'll pour out of teapots.

Or they'll splash.

They'll boil.

Anything which pours must also splash and pour.

So

they would have poured onto his face and splashed off.

They can create waves.

You can actually surf rats.

In theory.

You can get a puddle of them.

My first instinct was to scream out.

That's exactly.

The next thought he had is exactly the thought I had.

But I thought if I did, they might go into my mouth.

Which they totally would do.

So I just stood there as still as I could, waist deep in rats.

Luckily, a colleague saw what happened and lifted me out.

Love the podcast.

Paul.

Lovely stuff.

That's extraordinary.

Well done, Paul.

That's really, really good.

On the third day of Ratmus, my true love sent to me a hundred pouring rats, two duckling feet, and a rucksack bouncing on my knee.

Next day of Ratmus, this is a long one.

It's Karen from Dublin.

Love the pod.

Hope you guys have some plans to come to Ireland eventually.

Okay.

Firstly, can I start by saying how absolutely thrilled I am to finally have a space to share this rancid, vomit-inducing story?

Promising.

When I've told the story to friends and family in the past, it hasn't been well received.

Well, you're talking to the right people, isn't it?

We know about that.

We know how that feels.

This story encapsulates the most bittersweet moment of my life.

Croaky.

Great setup.

Yeah.

I'm currently writing this email on the train to work.

Thankfully, I'm now working in a more sane environment than I was back when this incident took place.

My rat story begins 10 years ago when I had just finished college.

I got a job as a project manager in an engineering company in Dublin, which shall remain nameless.

The owner of this company was one of the most bizarre and horrific individuals I have ever had the misfortune of meeting.

Imagine an alcoholic, sexually inappropriate, heaving mound of existence.

I just have to look at the two people in front of me.

It's just take my pick, which one do I go for?

Of course, he was filthy rich.

But what ran parallel to this was his outright refusal to spend a penny on maintenance for our offices.

Something was always broken or leaking or making a suspicious noise.

Over the course of a few weeks, a stain had started to develop on the false ceiling,

approximately six foot from my desk.

This wasn't at all surprising, as the building was pretty much in ruins from neglect.

However, day by day, the stain was progressively getting larger and darker in colour.

One day in passing, I mentioned this to our boss, and he said he might want to get it checked out.

Then, in his true Scrooge-like fashion, he went to the workshop next door to retrieve a ladder.

Why would he pay someone to look at the problem when he could just do it himself?

He returned back with the ladder, climbed up, and began lifting the false ceiling tiles.

He got two tiles in before splat, a huge dead rat fell from the ceiling, hitting our boss on the shoulder first and then splatting all over the ground like a water balloon of guts.

They do balloon out.

We've talked about that before.

Yeah.

Because in the internal gas, well, like Henry VIII style, doesn't it?

The internal gases, they bloat and sometimes explode on dying.

Yeah.

People began retching in disgust and running out of the office.

I had no idea the range of liquid rat splatter could be so great, but it was everywhere.

Our boss was paralyzed in disgust for a few moments, but then snapped out of it and screamed at one of the lads I worked with to clean up the mess.

Wow, it was truly horrendous to witness, but I'd relive it every day again just to see that perverted fuck covered in rancid, liquefied rat cadaver.

That is superb.

Oh, Karen, that was magnificent.

So, a bit of their cosmic justice there delivered by rat.

I like that.

And also the story, which is so often the case in rat stories and why they're such, why every great national, you know, and every great storytelling culture has its rat myths, it's because

who's the actual rat?

Yes.

Lovely.

And with the, I enjoyed the

sort of,

it heralded itself a bit, didn't it?

There was rat death seep.

Yes.

Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's a nice, sinister horror film like the creeping the creeping darkness what is the creeping darkness it was a very very well structured story i've got to say like that was superbly well told because it started with her on the train you know the like the narrative had a framing device there's a framing device

um

and um it's like at the beginning of a disney film with an old book opens up and it's once upon a time

so she was sat on that train or in titanic there's the 85 year old lady yeah taking a trip on the Titanic.

That's right.

Similar thing.

Yeah.

And at the beginning of It's Wonderful Life, although they didn't always keep this bit in, but there's a dead rat in a sewer and the camera flies up its arse.

And that's where the whole story actually takes place.

Yeah.

It's all about microbiomes.

It's all about little microbiotic little creatures.

Living on the rats.

Yeah.

I mean, well, yeah, so yeah, brilliant.

Sorry.

Brilliant.

I mean, yeah, she's the, yeah,

she's our, she's our joy.

She's got a Ulysses that people are actually interested in finishing.

Yes, exactly.

And that's much more manageable length for a novel, which is about

two chunky paragraphs.

And then a lot of dedications.

But also, quite often in a story like that, when you cut back at the end to the storyteller.

who sat on the train on the way to work,

you then get a little additional reveal, which is she's got a ring on her finger.

The ring is made out of rat cartilage.

She's married, she's married to a ginormous rat, and it's sat next to her.

And they're on the way to work together, they work together as well.

It's quite nice.

Do you know what I mean?

Like, because when you get married to someone, you tend to get a ring made out of their cartilage

and get a job together

on the fourth day of rats must my true love sent to me a large ceiling stain, a hundred pouring rats, two duckling feet, and a rucksack bouncing on my knee.

Mike, you've got another one, I think.

Oh, great.

For our fifth day of Ratmas.

It's the most wonderful rat of the year.

We've had that one, haven't we?

Yeah, we're running low now on Christmas.

Are there any new ones?

We haven't done.

It's beginning to look a lot like Ratmas

everywhere you go.

There's fetid feces in the street,

people puking on their feet,

it was Rasmus Eve, babe,

and all the old fats

and the NYPD rats.

Okay, oh, this is a double.

Oh, is it?

Double ratmas, that's what it says.

so

this is entitled this is from Sam, entitled Tortoise Rat Melange.

Sorry, I've double anecdoted here.

Combining the cycling over an animal and misplaced tortoise themes.

Hm, fair enough.

As a teenager I was mountain biking in the Pyrenees and got ready to get some pretty sick air off a mound in the trail when I realized that it had legs.

I managed to slam on the brakes and avoided a collision, but my brother was behind and not expecting it, so he went over the handlebars and ended up in a bush.

Win-win.

Oh, and on a separate rat topic, we had a school science open day where the biology department, A-level students, did rat dissections to show off the fact that we had access to all the scientific advances of the 16th century.

The teachers had bought a job lot of rats from somewhere and they arrived the night before, frozen into an enormous block.

One of the technicians took the block home and defrosted it in a warm bath, so the next day we arrived to a huge mat of lukewarm decomposing rat consomme and had to spend the the whole day cutting up the festering crotons.

Yeah, if you are going to batch freeze rats,

little bit of advice, because it can be like when you freeze some sliced bread, you know, the bits of bread get

here.

They adhere.

So once you take them out of the freezer,

get a chisel or a bread knife on those rats quickly and

you bash them, they'll pop off, they'll pop out of each other's, you know, they'll pop apart from each other quite easily.

But if you let them just defrost a little bit, they become soft and claggy, And it's much harder to separate them.

You'll be dealing with a sort of, yeah, a semi-defrosted mega rat.

Yeah.

Which isn't good.

On the fifth day of ratsmas, my true love sent to me a block of frozen rats, a large ceiling stain, a hundred pouring rats, two duckling feet, and a rucksack bouncing on my knee.

Long time listener, first time emailer.

But your your request for rat tales brought to mind a horrifying incident that took place this autumn.

This rat tale starts with a lovely walk with friends and our 12-month-old son around Alexandra Palace boating lake in London Town.

In a voice situation, we might do another take on that, but I think

we can crack on.

Yeah, Alexandra Palace Boating.

Alexandra Palace Boating Lake in London At the time our son was taking his first steps.

It really was a magical time and one that usually meant pretty slow progress on foot.

As we walked round the lake, we stopped to admire the ducks mingling among the pigeons as they harmoniously wandered around in piles of Canadian goose shit.

They all seemed to be having a fantastic time.

Suddenly out of nowhere appeared a rat the size of a pug.

The ducks bailed, immediately seeking the refuge and and perspective provided by the shallows of the lake.

A luxury not afforded the pigeons.

The rat pug circled the pigeons.

I mean, they have got the flying option, but anyway.

The rat pug, do you think?

The rat pug circled the pigeons, picking his prey.

He set about separating one from the group.

Then he pounced, straight for the jugular.

Rat pug wrestled it to the ground.

The pigeon flapping hopelessly whilst all its little pigeon friends initially watched on in horror, then having decided he was too far gone, simply resigned to his fate and they continued to peck away at the piles of goose shit.

It took two, maybe three minutes for the rat to finish the job.

Once he had simply, and they'd stood there watching this all for three minutes with their 12-month-old son.

And that's how serial killers are made.

Then,

so

it took two movies.

Yeah, once he had simply, once once he had he simply walked through the pigeon crowd like Moses across the Red Sea and back into the bushes.

We'll never know why the pigeons didn't fly away faced with this horror or why you and your family didn't walk away.

They're basically all him and the pigeons are basically all in the same sort of mindset, weren't they?

They were just sort of rubbernecking.

We'll never know why 30 or so pigeons chose to leave one of their own to this fate.

What we do know is that this is yet further evidence of the depraved and soulless nature of the rat, killing for fun, a rat amongst the pigeons.

My son found the whole affair exciting and amusing in equal measure.

It's a lovely age, isn't it?

Perhaps something a future therapist can pick up with him.

My wife and our friends have not been able to look each other in the eye since.

Once you've seen a rat-killer pigeon in front of an audience of pigeons, it changes you.

It really does.

I'm not sure why we couldn't drag ourselves away from the whole incident either.

I assume we were enchanted by some sort of rat pug spell.

I also have a horrifying tale involving a chicken, a fox, and an axe that took place in rural southern France.

But I'll wait for the podcast to inevitably turn in that direction.

George from Lower Crouch End.

Very nice, George.

Thank you, George.

He means Archway.

He absolutely means Archway.

Lower Crouch End.

No, actually, to be fair for him, he's written George from Lower Crouch End slash Tottenham.

So he's having a laugh.

you know, a chicken, a fox, and an act, isn't that some sort of like Aesop's fable he's referring to?

Riddle me this, yeah.

That's chicken, fox, and grain, isn't it?

Okay, yeah, yeah, the act really simplifies that riddle, doesn't it?

Basically, nullifies it as a riddle, isn't it?

On the sixth day of rats must, my true love sent to me a dead pigeon, a block of frozen rats,

a large ceiling stain, a hundred pouring rats, two duckling feet, and a rucksack bouncing on my knee.

My story is not quite a rat bursting out of a swan, but it did burn itself into my memory.

I went to visit a local restaurant in Edgbaston, brackets Birmingham.

I parked in the car park and was about to enter the pub when I saw a dead rat on the floor.

I was put off the restaurant slightly, so my wife and I sat in the car park deciding where to go instead, when a herring gull flew in and picked up the rat in its beak.

The gull tried to swallow the rat down in one, head first, but it kept getting stuck on the back end of the rat and having to cough the rat back up.

We watched it try this a few times and then went to Pizza Express.

Regards, Matt.

Thank you, Matt.

That's a very, I really like that.

That's short and sweet.

And it also, there's an important element of the rat story where they are.

They are engrossing.

These horrors, they are deeply engrossing.

They really are.

Felice ratidad.

Felisratidad.

You can't take your eyes off that.

And I understand that.

You want to see the end of that story.

There's something mesmerizing, isn't it?

But it's nice that that was a case where nature sorted itself out, didn't it?

It was the herring gull, which I assume is some sort of flying herring, right?

Which I've never seen.

But also, nature took its course by the couple eventually going to Pizza Express.

That is kind of...

Yes, exactly.

All is right with the world.

All is right with the world.

Which is a happy ending.

I mean, if you're a storyteller yourself and you're looking for a happy ending to a story of stuff, that's just one of the easiest ways to do it, isn't it?

Pizza Express, yes.

And it's also everyone's going back to their natural habitat, isn't it?

The herring, the herring, the herring

owned.

Did you say?

The herring gulls going back to the ocean with the rat.

Everyone's in their natural habitat doing what they're doing.

It's got a long way to go, isn't it?

What they were born to do.

Fair play to it.

Yeah.

On the seventh day of rats, must my true love sent to me:

This one is promisingly titled Garbage Shed Rat.

And it's from

Yuka from Helsinki, or Juka from Helsinki.

So, hello.

I too have a rat story, although only horrifying in the psychological sense instead of the usual guts and viscera.

Oh, good.

I like the sound of that.

Maybe a sort of dark scandy movie version, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

Freshly broken up, I decided to move from the outskirts of Helsinki to Calio near the centre, a sort of Helsinki's Camden town.

The hipster-infested, artsy part of town seemed a fine place for a single young man to spend time recovering from heartbreak.

Hipsters, however, weren't the only creature infesting Calio.

I discovered this when taking the first armload of moving-related garbage to the communal garbage shed.

Opening the door, I was greeted by a bluebell-sized rat regarding me at eye-level, perched upon the cardboard bin.

I didn't panic.

I knew rats to be apprehensive beasts, so I kicked a bin to send it scurrying on its way.

The rat didn't move a muscle.

Oh, yeah.

It calmly stared me down with a look of pure disdain in its beady eyes.

It was as if the rat knew I was alone in a new part of town with my self-confidence at a post-break-up low.

You should not have moved here.

The look seemed to say,

for this is the city of the rat.

I could not endure its rodential regard for long.

Suffice it to say that the cardboard did not make it into the recital that day, and for many days hence, Yorca.

That was great.

I mean, the use of the word rodential was a real high point for me.

Yeah.

Is that even a word?

I mean, it is now.

It should be.

Rodential.

this is um i think putin has a quite a similar formative story yeah he does doesn't he from his childhood in st petersburg yeah when he he realized he was cornered by rats running around in a building and he realized that he stared down a mega rat that he had to kill them another jog

and then deny everything

is that true that he had to face off some rats yeah he's got a story that he tells about i think yeah and particularly facing off a mega like a mega rat looking it looking in the eye there's a moment of like a formative moment in his childhood where he's,

wow, it's one-on-one eyeballing a rat, you're toe-to-toe, toe-to-claw.

I think it was a kill or be killed moment type thing, was it?

Or was it to do with that?

Well, I think oddly, he doesn't come out.

The story I heard, I don't think he comes out of it necessarily too heroic.

I think what he actually did is he befriended the rat, gave the rat quite a high-ranking job, and then eventually the rat just fell out of a window.

That's how he dealt with it.

It's quite terrifying, isn't it?

There are moments where you face up to an animal and it doesn't back down are quite terrifying.

Yeah.

So, like,

I mean, dogs can be absolutely terrifying, I think.

Generally, they're lovely.

Obviously, Pam's lovely.

But when a dog

have you ever faced up to a dog when it starts showing its teeth and snarling, it's absolutely

horrifying moments.

So, just the idea of that rat just standing its ground.

I actually had a similar thing with a cockroach when I was on holiday in Thailand once.

I went to have a shower.

I was traveling.

So I was staying in this hostel.

I went down to have a shower.

And

there was this one cockroach that was just staring at me across the bathroom floor.

And I just sort of I just couldn't move.

I was terrified by it.

And it just wi and it was we were just staring each other out.

And eventually I ran past it, went in to have a shower.

There was a bunch of shower cubicles.

I was having a shower.

And

and then I saw his little antennae coming

coming through

a sort of hole in the

sort of wall, had kind of these holes in the bricks for it.

And I saw his little antennae coming in because he was following the light.

So I jumped out of the shower, went into the next cubicle, turned the light on, and a few seconds started washing myself.

A few minutes later, I saw his little antennae coming in.

And I literally said to myself, Right, so that's it.

I'm going to have a shower, staggered over these five cubicles up and down every time I go into a cubicle.

I'm going to go to whether or not they're occupied.

Regardless of

and just do it like that, and that's why I did it.

So it took me about half an hour to have the shower because I'd just do a little bit further.

You know, I'd soap up a nipple.

I just thought this story maybe needed a bit of blue just to spice it up a bit.

I'd go to the next cubicle, I'd maybe, maybe, maybe

no.

You know, go into another one,

froth up a froth up a thigh

do you mean cover myself in the soap and then gradually wash it all off just cubicle by cubicle and this little this little um cockroach following me each time

rudolph the rat nose reindeer had a very shiny rat nose

on the eighth day of rats must my true love sent to me a rat that stared me down a herring gull a dead pigeon a block of frozen rats,

a large ceiling stain, a hundred pouring rats, two duckling feet, and a rucksack bouncing on my knee.

On the ninth day of ratmost, my true love gave to me this anecdote about rats.

My dear beans, you asked for more stories about rats, so I shall recount to you a tale as old as the Pied Piper of Hamlin.

An ex-boyfriend of mine had a flatmate who was the embodiment of a stereotypical hippie.

Picture Neil from the Young Ones, but with blonder long hair and a harrogate accent.

Nice.

Where is Harrogate?

Is it North?

Yeah, Yorkshire.

Northern.

One evening, while sitting in their Q station-side lodgings.

What?

I don't know what that means.

How are you spending Q?

They spoke at KEW station.

So one evening while

a place in London.

With a capital K, yeah.

One evening while sitting in their Q station-side lodgings, my ex saw a rat scuttle across the floor and run under

for data protection, let's call it Susan's bedroom door.

He knocked on the door, no answer, knocked again, nothing.

Fearing the fearsome creature had already overwhelmed Susan, he opened the door to find said Susan lying on his slash-her futon, smoking a a huge spliff while the rat sat contentedly on his chest inhaling

what

this is a new side of rat behavior i did not know about

um

inhaling and i think we can safely assume smirking as it contemplated burrowing inside susan ready to burst out of his slash her chest later at a later date

incidentally this same ex is a motorcyclist who subsequently accelerated too soon as the level crossing barrows were raising at East Sheen Station, getting his cycle helmet caught in the crosshairs, as it were, and began to be lifted off his bike, his neck straining upwards before some benevolent pedestrians pulled him back to Earth.

Good lord.

My word.

Yours, Gemma, from Bremen.

Well, Gemma, that's

a good thing.

Well, that gives a whole new angle, doesn't it,

to rats?

The idea that rats would chill out with the dube.

Would chill out with some duob

and maybe show a different side to themselves.

I like it.

On the ninth day of ratsmas, my true love sent to me a bift of smoking rat, a rat that stared me down, a hair-herring gull, a dead pigeon, a block of frozen rats,

a large ceiling stain, a hundred pouring rats, two duckling feet, and a rucksack bouncing on my knee.

The tenth day of Ratmus, this is from from Ben from Tamworth.

Thank you, Ben.

Dear Beans, after listening to your recent episode, I felt I must tell you about my dad's experience as a policeman in Birmingham in the late 60s.

Okay, great.

Good historical rat story.

He was called to a robbery at a meat processing plant.

Yes.

Which, of course, was Britain's main industry, wasn't it, in the 60s?

Yeah, 80% of Birmingham was meat processing.

Yeah, it was all meat processing.

Where a safe had been broken into.

As he was being escorted through the cold storage, he saw a strange grey blur out of the corner of his eye.

Amongst the frozen pig carcasses were rats that had adapted to the sub-zero temperatures by growing thick coats.

Of course they do.

And by smoking doobies.

Yeah.

This gave them the appearance of small cats, medium-sized rabbits, or miniature dogs.

All of those ideas are horrific in their own way.

They certainly would have not have fitted down a Byro.

Amazing creatures.

Keep up the lukewarm banter.

Ben from Tamworth.

Wow.

Well, they're incredibly adaptable.

That's one of the things that's so frightening about rats, isn't it?

They can adapt to so many different kinds of conditions.

On the tenth day of rats must my true love sent to me a sub-zero rat, a bift of smoking rat, a brat that stared me down, a herring gull, a dead pigeon, a block of frozen rats,

a large ceiling stain, a hundred pouring rats, two duckling feet, and a a rucksack bouncing on my knee.

Okay, this is from Andy and is

entitled Horrific Rat Tale.

Which I think is useful and useful for the listeners to know.

It's going to be horrific.

Yeah.

I don't think anything we've read out today hasn't been horrific.

That's true.

In fact, we should probably put in a retrospective

trigger warning, shouldn't we?

Yeah,

some of the stuff you have listened to

about rats.

Will be about rats and will change you forever.

Yeah.

So if you're listening to this in the car with children,

turn around, they're no longer children.

They're thousands of rats.

They're thousands of rats.

Okay, so this is from Andy.

Hi, Beans.

I've got a story to rival the trauma of the rat bursting out of the swan.

When I was a cub, we had to take part in a St.

George's Day parade through the center of town.

As we walked past a pub, a putrid rat, riddled with maggots, fell off the the pub roof and onto the shoulder of my friend.

I dubbed the sir rat.

I'm sure this incident understandably changed him forever or marked him in some kind of rat-based prophecy.

Cheers, Andy.

I think that a prophecy has taken place there.

Yes.

We want to know what's happened to this dear friend.

There's no way that friend has forgotten that incident.

No.

It stays with you, the feeling of it landing on your shoulder.

It's a two-part process, isn't it?

It hits and then it kind of folds over.

yeah the tump the maggots spray off it's a little spray impact have you ever had someone drop a lasagna a lasagna on you from height yeah exactly

that's exactly what i was thinking about

and obviously it's good luck which but that doesn't well depending on the shoulder it hits depending on the shoulder yeah and depending on the um the consistency of the uh of the bolognese whether it's just pork or if it's pork and beef well yeah if it hits you on the left shoulder you'll become the king of padua yes and vegetarian lasagna yeah in which case you'll simply be part of their kind of their entourage.

And then, right shoulder, you'll marry the ugliest princess in all of Piedmont.

Yeah.

And if it lands straight on your head and a bit of bechamel lands on your nose,

you end up having to work in the ticket office of the London dungeon.

Where you'll fall in love with the first person you see.

That's right.

Guaranteed.

Which a lot of the time is an effigy of a,

it's wax man administering a hang drawing and quartering, isn't it?

To Shrek.

Because London Dungeons, of course, is now sponsored by Shrek.

On the 11th day of rats, must my true love send to me a rat on my shoulder, a sub-zero rat, a bifta-smoking rat, a rat that stared me down, a herring gull, a dead pigeon, a block of frozen rats,

a large ceiling ceiling stain, a hundred pouring rats, two duckling feet, and a rucksack bouncing on my knee.

And final day of Ratmus, the 12th day of Ratmus, will be delivered by Henry.

Thank you, Trevorn, for all of your rat emails.

We've not got through them all.

I think we've probably read, I'd say, about half, but there is simply not enough time in the day to get through all of the horrendous rat experiences that our listeners have had.

Ratmas, baby, deliver

me.

For me,

been an

I really can't stay, but baby, there's rats outside.

I got to go away.

There's also rats inside.

There's also rats inside.

Right.

Hi, Bean.

Here is my rat story.

Hi.

Who's it from?

This is from Ruth in Stourbridge.

Great.

Hello, Ruth.

This is one of those second-hand stories that has entered friendship group folklore.

My friend once lived in a cul-de-sac, in a semi-rural area near to some stables.

He would often notice a band of local youths gathered outside his front door, chanting and running about.

One day, they seemed particularly rowdy, and when he looked out of the window, he noticed one kid with a sharpened stick upon which he'd impaled what looked like a dead rat.

The boy was running around, waving it in the others' faces, to screams of horror and disgust.

Absolute legend, kind of say, This is my little baby.

Ew, my friend thought, how barbaric.

And then he noticed a steaming pile of horse poo in the middle of the road.

Hmm.

He thought he must have been mistaken, and it wasn't a putrid rat the child was wielding, but just a bit of equine feces.

But no, it was a rat.

A rat that the child kept dipping in the shit

before lunging at his friends.

And hence the game Shitty Rat was born.

Harmless fun in the Worcestershire countryside.

What a bucolic,

lovely bucolic image, isn't it?

Oh, England.

Oh, my God.

It's so lovely.

And it's so, I'm almost, Mike,

going to rural weddings, you must be almost bored of the amount of times that that's the story of how they met, you know, the bride and the brilliant.

Good old game of shitty rats.

Good old game of shitty rat.

And often, yeah, these the wedding breakfasts will end with a game of shitty rat.

On the 12th day of rat must my true love sent to me

a shitty rat, a rat on my shoulder, a sub-zero rat, a bift a smoking rat, a rat that stared me down, a herring gull, a dead pigeon, a block of frozen rats,

a large ceiling stain, a hundred pouring rats, two duckling feet, and a rucksack bouncing on my knee.

Oh, Christ.

Well, um, that was Ratmus.

Thank you, everyone, for joining us for these Ratmas celebrations.

Yes, Merry Ratmus, one and all.

Enjoy the rest of your Ratmus day.

Yeah.

Your Ratmus meal, your game of shitty rat with the family afterwards.

Surrounded by your nearest and dearest rats.

And I hope Ratna Claus has brought you something nice, something unexpected.

Maybe a pile of breadcrumbs, maybe some small dry turds, maybe some wet turds.

Maybe vial disease.

And yeah, Merry Ratmas.

Merry Ratmas, everyone.

Merry Ratmas.