Magawa, a hero rat, awarded gold medal

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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-54284952

What a delightful change from the bombardment of bad news in the daily press. We animal lovers rejoice!

I like his little collar/harness

Yes, me too.

I was shocked and saddened this morning to hear that more bombs were dropped on Laos than were dropped during the whole of WW2. And the amount of remaining USA unexploded ordnance is shocking. I was told today that the USA has not yet chosen to help clean up this terrible mess they left behind that continues to cause harm to innocents. I wonder if ordinary citizens in the USA are aware of this. I doubt that they are. It's probably been swept under the carpet from public view.

Thank goodness that at least rats are helping limit the damage.

"But the true and ongoing tragedy lies in the 80 million unexploded bombs that litter Laos today—also known as UXO (unexploded ordnance). Over 30 percent of the bombs dropped did not explode upon impact. The most common and deadly UXO in Laos are anti-personnel cluster bomb munitions which are about the size of a tennis ball but extremely dangerous. Forty percent of UXO victims are children who pick up the bombs, usually thinking they are toys. The vast majority (almost 80 percent) of Lao people are subsistence farmers. This means making the decision to risk your life farming is a daily reality for many in Laos. The UXO issues cause a sustained hindrance for the Lao economy, especially compared to their rapidly growing neighbors, China, Vietnam, and Thailand." ( Text sourced from the Pulitzer Centre)

^ No I hadn't heard about the bombings in Laos until now. I checked my news feed and it doesn't appear. It's unfortunate we're not better informed.

I have some rats to volunteer for mine sweeping.
The ones that keep shredding my garden and pooping on the porch.
The hero rat is cool, he deserves a nice wedge of cheese.

hehe... as with humans, there's goodies and baddies

Millions of lab rats have died in the cause of human medicine so they all deserve a gold medal

Quite a few rodents probably saved prisoners of war in Japanese POW camps from dying of starvation... one can hardly imagine how thankful they must have been for some protein, however scant....

Nice pic of Magawa wearing his gold medal (and some other photos):
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/magawa-the- ... very-award

Rat steaks fed starving folk all over the world. Not just Japanese POWs.

Not sure if you ever saw the Australian 60 min documentary on the rat catchers of India the Irula tribe



rice paddy ratty only eats rice grain so they are technically no more dangerous to eat than beef or lamb.

Fascinating, I had never heard of them

I find it weird to call an animal a hero for helping out doing something dangerous like this. They don't KNOW they're doing something really dangerous, they're just following their training in the hope of a reward.

I'm actually a bit disgusted with us humans using animals to clear up the messes we've made. To me it's an abuse of trust. We wouldn't send little kids in to do that work, would we? The long history of dogs and horses in warfare is really sad, too.

 

He would prefer cheese.

If Magawa could talk about being compared to the president he would say "well we are both rats but at least I take a bath"

Cute thread.

I guess these field rats are safer to eat than city rats?