Rats on the Plate and on your Palate

“If you can’t beat them, eat them!”

When I lived in Japan, I knew I had mice in my apartment. They had found my chocolate and had torn holes into the cover and eaten some: you could see their toothmarks. I also saw some quite regularly when I happened to enter the kitchen at night and switched on the light. But it weren’t the mice that made me seek a different flat, it was when I had rats in my bedroom! These clever, but not exactly charming rodents, must have resided behind the cupboard in the wall and on four occasions traps I had placed around my bedroom caught one of them. There are people who love rats and keep them as pets and in many parts of Asia credit is given to the rats’ intelligence, their adaptability and hardiness and even temples (e.g., the Karni Mata) dedicated to rats exist in India, because Hindus believe that a rat had helped to carry Lord Ganesh around the world. And there are many people who’d claim that there was nothing more delicious than rat meat on your plate, rat fried or roasted, or rat as a stew or casserole.

Grown-ups and Kids

Why are grown-ups and kids so different?

I’ve said it many times before: the questions children have are so fresh, so spontaneous and pure: they can be real mind-teasers. My six-year-old daughter asked me one day: “Why are kids so different from adults?” What exactly she meant, wasn’t clear to me, but the fact is of course that the young of most animals do, indeed, differ significantly from their adult relatives in many ways: size, looks, behaviour, attitude…..

Honey Bees and our Food

Can we survive without bees, the chief pollinator?

The great Albert Einstein, although disputed by some, is often quoted to have famously stated that if there were no bees around any more, humans would have only 4 years to survive. Whether or not he actually had made such a statement, these days honey bees are very much in the news as reports of a decline in bee populations come in from various parts of the world.