Bob Mount: Momma rat prevented chaos

Last week, I remarked that a tame Norway rat might have saved my career and quite possibly most of my earthly possessions. I’m sure that anyone who read the column must be wondering how a Norway rat could have been my ‘savior.’ Let me explain.

When I was teaching herpetology at AU, I took my class on a field trip to the Conecuh National Forest in South Alabama.

One of the students captured a venomous coral snake. He asked, “Dr. Mount, would you object to my keeping it in captivity for a while? I’d like to see if I can induce it to feed as a captive.”

I told him I had no objection, but warned him that coral snakes were ‘Houdinis’ because of their remarkable ability to escape from captivity.

The morning after our return, I asked the student, “How’s your coral snake doing?”

“I haven’t checked on him. He’s in the snake room.”

The snake room, located in Funchess Hall, housed a number of snakes of various species and was under my supervision.

I had assumed the student had intended to keep the snake at his own premises, and when he told me it was in the snake room, my heart skipped a beat. We went immediately to the room, and the snake box in which the student had placed the snake was, as I feared, empty.

I was thus confronted with a dilemma. I could announce that a coral snake was loose in Funchess Hall, and half or more of the staff and faculty would evacuate the building and might be given extended paid vacations for who knows how long. And I might, for just cause, have lost my job.

The alternative would be to pretend I had no knowledge of the fugitive coral snake, which would have held as much water as a sieve. And had someone been bitten by the coral snake, a plaintiff’s lawyer could have padded his pockets at Auburn’s and my expense.

I decided the former alternative would be the morally correct one, and told my students, “Before I report the missing coral snake, let’s be certain it’s not hiding somewhere in this room.”

To no avail, we searched every place in the room where the snake might be hiding, except for the space between a large lab table and the wall.

We pulled the table from against the wall, revealing a rat’s nest in which a momma rat was attending her babies. She was obviously an escapee from a colony of tame, white Norway rats we were maintaining in the room.

I wiped sweat from my brow and breathed a sigh of relief, because next to the nest was a two-inch segment of the body of the fugitive snake.

The momma rat had obviously killed the snake and eaten all but the little piece that was sufficient evidence of the snake’s demise. Needless to say, the momma rat was well cared for until she died at a ripe old age.

Bob Mount is emeritus professor of zoology and entomology at Auburn University and writes a weekly column for the Opelika-Auburn News.