I ran over a Swedish fat rat — on purpose

Photo: The rat-street (rat not present)

One morning, a few days ago, southern Sweden weather turned cold over night. It went from a few degrees on the plus-side to -4C. I had hell of a morning. Snow had been coming the day before, then it froze, and of course someone had been stowing away the car snow scraper (disappeared).

Finally arriving at daycare with my daughter, I see a rat on the road. I had just turned left and the animal was on the street, alive but not moving like normal rats do. I ran over it.

Right after, I was disgusted by both the animal and my action. But, I told myself, I had no chance of detecting it until it was too late. Not true though, as I will find out later. The poor animal was not instantly killed by me running over it, it was actually alive for a minute or two after. A white van stopped right in front of it. I don´t know what the driver were thinking, and I went inside daycare and tried to forget about it.

Now I sit here, a few days later, and know that all of this shit could have been avoided. What triggered my action to run over the rat? I saw it, and I know that I had a chance to not run over it, but there was a life time of a few things behind my action that pushed me to kill the rat:

• discussions I have had with people, when we have talked about those f-ing rats that always get in everywhere and how we can prevent it. But those little bastards are cunning and figure out how to get past the obstacles we put out (better strike first). (For the record, I have never had a rat inside my apartment)
• news articles about people that fight giant rats inside their apartment (better strike first)
• rats carry disease. The modern theory on plague is that rat was a carrier for the bacteria that killed 1/3 of Europe´s population back in the Middle Ages (better strike first).
• rats can be aggressive towards people (better strike first).

Don´t be fooled, you take decisions every day based on your experiences, and other´s experiences too. I just happened to see what was going on inside my head in this extreme situation, or after to be precise. I had a choice, that´s all I want to say. I just have to lower my speed at things (rats, decisions, emailing back to angry people, in discussion etc.) that I arrive towards.

The point is that we do bad things based on all the preconceptions we might have about people being terrorists, foreign or from a different religion/belief system.

P.S. Need I say that someone else cleaned up the rat? It´s so easy to turn your back to gross things, especially if you caused them yourself…