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    Google Adsense ad revenue for December, 2025 was just $30 over the cost of the lease for the server running this site. So, in effect, the money providing the incentive for me to continue running this site is coming SOLELY from the paid memberships and sponsorships here. Which honestly ain't much....

Huge Rats

Yeah, it'd be pretty freaky to think you had an infestation of those buggers. I just can't imagine seeing them running around like that. :ack2: In all honesty, I'd probably think it was some sort of opossum...

It wasn't some super rat like some were saying though, it was just some sort of pouched species from Africa. I think they said it was a Gambian pouched rat. People commonly keep those as exotic pets, I even remember seeing a whole forum just on pouched rats once and I actually thought they were pretty neat. :p Supposedly those found in New York were released or escaped from the trade.
I think that if they were as common as regular rats then they'd have made great feeders for larger snakes, I hear they even breed more often. ;) But after a monkeypox outbreak a few years back, I'm pretty sure they're now illegal without a permit. Bummer there.

FUNFACT ~ I once saw a show where they trained pouched rats to sniff out explosives and tuberculosis. They're called HeroRATS and I hear they're actually pretty good at what they do. :D http://www.apopo.org/home.php They say it takes 9 months and almost $8k to train a HeroRAT though. :eek:
 
Many moons ago I worked at a car dealership in downtown Baltimore that had a very old building next door that a lot of the older parts inventory was stored at. I don't know how much the rats weighed that I saw over there, but they were VERY large. Yes, pretty darn close to the size of an opposum.

I wasn't all that keen about going over to that place, let me tell you....
 
I couldnt imagine the bite of those suckers. Imagine a rat or rats of that size running towards you. Id be sprinting up the nearest telephone pole.
 
Up a telephone pole? Funny, that's where I always see rats over here - up in the wires, walking across the lines.
No escape from them it seems. :reddevil: LOL

We get a lot of wild rats in our producing trees, they'll decimate them. They don't even limit themselves to eating a whole fruit or two, they have to nibble a bit on every single one of them! You can't really give them in gift baskets to people then saying "Just eat around the rat bites". :no01: They're pretty smart too, after about a week of successful kills they'll start avoiding the traps...
The encounter I remember most was actually on a rocky beach in LA. It was nighttime, we had just come back from a trip at sea and I went poking around for crabs on the shore to amuse myself before we went home. I tilted up this huge rock and 5-7 huge, black rats just swarmed out from underneath! I swear one went over my foot! :bawling:

I normally pride myself on having a good "creepy" tolerance, but I just lost it then. I had no idea our beaches had rats and of all the critters I expected to see, that was not one of them.
I guess there really is nowhere safe from those varmints. :ack2:
 
lol...i used to wait for trains underground in NYC...man...the rat sizes i used to see. And they also had attitude on them. They look at you and i swear they were flicking you off.
 
My grandfather worked in the train yards and refrigeration, so he would unload food basically off of the trains. In these train yards, they would throw older or rotten food in heaps. These heaps would attract and create these GIANT rats and dogs. He said they were vicious as hell too. They rivaled large feline in size. I have seen some pics that he took and they were incredibly massive. Words cannot describe. The packs of dogs were really mean too. Nearly EVERYONE carried a gun.
 
I was waiting for the bus at night in L.A. because my car was in the shop and as Im standing there, I saw something coming at me from the corner of my eye...I thought it was a cat or a small dog but when i turned it was a huge rat that was about 2 feet nose to tail and it just ran down into the sewer drain...didnt know they could get that big. Even now it takes me a long time to get my rats to get large let alone xxls hehe...never took the bus at night again
 
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