Ratphobia

noelindublin · Loudmouth

Ratphobia

Jules · The biggest Geldof fan in the world, bar none!

I like them, personally, very intelligent and pretty little things. Get very upset when my cat brings them in and mice. So cute. Would happily have a pet one if they lasted long enough and my cat wouldn't eat them up. smile

noelindublin · Loudmouth

Jules wrote:

I like them, personally, very intelligent and pretty little things. Get very upset when my cat brings them in and mice. So cute. Would happily have a pet one if they lasted long enough and my cat wouldn't eat them up.

I was being serious when I said I had a rat phobia.These animals have always disgusted me. It is said that there are thousands of rats lurking in the vicinity of humans, particularly in cities and towns that go largely unnoticed.

Bet Jules if you had a pet rat you'd call him Bob! Do cats actually eat rats- I thought it was just mice they ate?

Jules · The biggest Geldof fan in the world, bar none!

So was I, I like them. I have a bird phobia, so do understand. Yes cats get rats, birds, mice, anything small and that lives, breathes and moves. Sadly. It would be good to have 6 pet rats, Bob, Pete, Simon, Gerry, Garry and Johnny.

noelindublin · Loudmouth

Jules wrote:

So was I, I like them. I have a bird phobia, so do understand. Yes cats get rats, birds, mice, anything small and that lives, breathes and moves. Sadly. It would be good to have 6 pet rats, Bob, Pete, Simon, Gerry, Garry and Johnny.

Your worst fear must be to encounter birds like Tippi Hedron in Hitch****s movie The Birds. We' ll have to get Freud on the case again.

Unfortunately I'm not too fond of cats either- they seem too selfish and self absorbed- but I do like dogs who generally are responsive and friendly. But thats just my experience of them.

Cazzy · Tonight

aw no! I can understand perhaps a phobia of wild rats , but you're really missing out when it comes to the domestic ones n_n. I have had 4 pet rats in the past and they really are the most beautiful, cheeky, intelligent and affectionate creatures. :)

noelindublin · Loudmouth

Cazzy wrote:

aw no! I can understand perhaps a phobia of wild rats , but you're really missing out when it comes to the domestic ones n_n. I have had 4 pet rats in the past and they really are the most beautiful, cheeky, intelligent and affectionate creatures. :)

Maybe I need some exposure therapy where I just look at pictures and then play with toy rats and then get to see a pet rat live but life's too short!

The famous photo of Bob in the Rat Trap got me thinking. This was in the days before cgi so did they have to make a big mock rat trap for the photo shoot? Probably.

Also this may be an urban legend but in the very early days of the Boomtown Rats the band used to project film of rats in sewers etc which they got from Rentokill, as a background to create a stir, mainly in Dublin around 1976/77. Almost sure I read this in Is That It? Certainly the scene with Geldof and the lads and their brilliant stage presence enhanced by scary rats images paints a picture. A bit more exciting than Coldplay and their corporate rock.

BTR · Tonight

noelindublin wrote:

Cazzy wrote:

aw no! I can understand perhaps a phobia of wild rats , but you're really missing out when it comes to the domestic ones n_n. I have had 4 pet rats in the past and they really are the most beautiful, cheeky, intelligent and affectionate creatures. :)

Maybe I need some exposure therapy where I just look at pictures and then play with toy rats and then get to see a pet rat live but life's too short!

The famous photo of Bob in the Rat Trap got me thinking. This was in the days before cgi so did they have to make a big mock rat trap for the photo shoot? Probably.

Also this may be an urban legend but in the very early days of the Boomtown Rats the band used to project film of rats in sewers etc which they got from Rentokill, as a background to create a stir, mainly in Dublin around 1976/77. Almost sure I read this in Is That It? Certainly the scene with Geldof and the lads and their brilliant stage presence enhanced by scary rats images paints a picture. A bit more exciting than Coldplay and their corporate rock.

I would like to get a copy of that footage and project it again at some gigs. Can anyone help source the footage?

Cazzy · Tonight

noelindublin wrote:

Cazzy wrote:

aw no! I can understand perhaps a phobia of wild rats , but you're really missing out when it comes to the domestic ones n_n. I have had 4 pet rats in the past and they really are the most beautiful, cheeky, intelligent and affectionate creatures. :)

Maybe I need some exposure therapy where I just look at pictures and then play with toy rats and then get to see a pet rat live but life's too short!

The famous photo of Bob in the Rat Trap got me thinking. This was in the days before cgi so did they have to make a big mock rat trap for the photo shoot? Probably.

Also this may be an urban legend but in the very early days of the Boomtown Rats the band used to project film of rats in sewers etc which they got from Rentokill, as a background to create a stir, mainly in Dublin around 1976/77. Almost sure I read this in Is That It? Certainly the scene with Geldof and the lads and their brilliant stage presence enhanced by scary rats images paints a picture. A bit more exciting than Coldplay and their corporate rock.

Haha! Agreed, life is too short to expose oneself to one's greatest fears when it isn't actually necessary xD. As to the rat trap, yeah I assume that it was a prop... Or alternatively, borrowed from someone who deals with giant hybrid rat infestations n_n. OR EVEN borrowed from a seriously die hard btr fan (who takes the rat idea too literally) who built it in the vain hope of catching herself a member of the band :)

The rentokill film idea sounds quite plausible and I would be very interested to see said film.

noelindublin · Loudmouth

BTR wrote:

noelindublin wrote:

Cazzy wrote:

aw no! I can understand perhaps a phobia of wild rats , but you're really missing out when it comes to the domestic ones n_n. I have had 4 pet rats in the past and they really are the most beautiful, cheeky, intelligent and affectionate creatures. :)

Maybe I need some exposure therapy where I just look at pictures and then play with toy rats and then get to see a pet rat live but life's too short!

The famous photo of Bob in the Rat Trap got me thinking. This was in the days before cgi so did they have to make a big mock rat trap for the photo shoot? Probably.

Also this may be an urban legend but in the very early days of the Boomtown Rats the band used to project film of rats in sewers etc which they got from Rentokill, as a background to create a stir, mainly in Dublin around 1976/77. Almost sure I read this in Is That It? Certainly the scene with Geldof and the lads and their brilliant stage presence enhanced by scary rats images paints a picture. A bit more exciting than Coldplay and their corporate rock.

I would like to get a copy of that footage and project it again at some gigs. Can anyone help source the footage?

hi BTR - A belated happy Christmas and thanks most sincerely for running the website.

Lots of bands these days use some sort of projection to enhance the live performance and also to get close ups of the band etc.

These projections are done nowadays by digital projectors. I've got one to watch movies as I'm a big film fan. In the seventies the would have used a film projector and film or celluloid as its more normally known.

So unless there is some celluloid film of rats in the rentokill vaults you'd need to get a digital projector and dvd of rats. Of course one could transfer the celluloid to dvd and then project it. Personally the idea of rats being blown up to huge size on a screen gives me the creeps as I can never get used to seeing them.

Anyway back in the day it would have been pretty spectacular in a sweaty club with Geldof and the band showing how brilliant they were.

-- Edited by noelindublin on Thursday 30th of December 2010 03:00:51 PM

noelindublin · Loudmouth

Cazzy wrote:

noelindublin wrote:

Cazzy wrote:

aw no! I can understand perhaps a phobia of wild rats , but you're really missing out when it comes to the domestic ones n_n. I have had 4 pet rats in the past and they really are the most beautiful, cheeky, intelligent and affectionate creatures. :)

Maybe I need some exposure therapy where I just look at pictures and then play with toy rats and then get to see a pet rat live but life's too short!

The famous photo of Bob in the Rat Trap got me thinking. This was in the days before cgi so did they have to make a big mock rat trap for the photo shoot? Probably.

Also this may be an urban legend but in the very early days of the Boomtown Rats the band used to project film of rats in sewers etc which they got from Rentokill, as a background to create a stir, mainly in Dublin around 1976/77. Almost sure I read this in Is That It? Certainly the scene with Geldof and the lads and their brilliant stage presence enhanced by scary rats images paints a picture. A bit more exciting than Coldplay and their corporate rock.

Haha! Agreed, life is too short to expose oneself to one's greatest fears when it isn't actually necessary xD. As to the rat trap, yeah I assume that it was a prop... Or alternatively, borrowed from someone who deals with giant hybrid rat infestations n_n. OR EVEN borrowed from a seriously die hard btr fan (who takes the rat idea too literally) who built it in the vain hope of catching herself a member of the band :)

The rentokill film idea sounds quite plausible and I would be very interested to see said film.

Very amusing! The Boomtown Rats were a very clever band in terms of promoting themselves and I heard also that they may have released live rats at some gigs in Ireland when they were starting out. This again may be an urban myth but it would have been pretty interesting to see! Imagine live rats running around amongst the audience.

Of course this was all happening in the very early days of punk around 1976/77 so the Rats were well ahead of the game and they could play their instruments too as they did lots of touring before the started having hits and becoming famous.

As they say if these stories are not true why let the truth get in the way?. Just remembered from the hits DVD Geldof on TOTP and the windup clockwork mouse as the start into Like Clockwork. Sense of humour too. Did the Clash or The Jam have a sense of humour. Postcards on an answer please.

Jules · The biggest Geldof fan in the world, bar none!

I had a dream last night about an enormous rat biggrin

Freud ? hmmmmmm

noelindublin · Loudmouth

I was watching a German movie last night from the nineties called Stalingrad about the WW2 battle in the said city.

The had some scenes shot in the sewers where the Germain and Russian armies battled for control and of course there were large scary rats on display including ones eating dead and rotting bodies.

So these rats are never going to win me over.

Jules · The biggest Geldof fan in the world, bar none!

The rat in my dream wasn't a particularly nice or nice looking rat, you wouldn't have been impressed. Don't like the sound of the rats in the film either hmm

noelindublin · Loudmouth

Jules wrote:

The rat in my dream wasn't a particularly nice or nice looking rat, you wouldn't have been impressed. Don't like the sound of the rats in the film either

Cazzy earlier posted about pet rats which look relatively harmless. I checked them out on google images, but I can't help but notice they belong to the rat family and these pet rats might grow up to be more scary looking!

Its the big fat ones with long tails, possibly the ones who carried the Black Plague back in the fourteenth century you have to look out for.

Anyway I was always curious as to whether other people felt disturbed by rats like me. Its somewhat ironic being a huge fan of the Boomtown Rats I suppose!

JoanOfArc · The Fine Art of Surfacing

Apparently there are more rats in the city than people, and thats just the ones in suits! lol

seriously theres supposed to be more rats than people.

Funnily enough i had a problem with rodents in my flat last year.

It all started when i was sitting in the living room one evening then out of the corner of my eye i saw something that looked like a small fuzzy ball of fluff scoot across the kitchen floor. I mentioned this to the bf and we looked round the kitchen but couldnt see anything, so we settled down again and then i saw it out the corner of my eye again. I think it was at this point i started to call it gnasher as out of the corner of my eye it looked like it had black fur like gnasher the dog out of Denice the Menace.

Anyway to cut a long story short my bf saw a mouse later on after i had gone to bed which confirmed that this hadn't all been in my imagination. So anyway before i knew it there were zillions of blooming gnashers, i saw them in the living room, the kitchen and even in the bedroom. In fact one morning i woke up and found mouse pooh on my bed near my pillow!! I even found one on my kitchen surface i shrieked with absolute horror and it looked up at me, never forget that face, brown furry with black beady eyes staring up at me, looked like could have been rat. He scooted down behind the cooker.

I had been trying to deal with the problem humanely, oh its a long story, i got the holes in the walls filled up with some foamy stuff that solidifies so they couldnt get in. i used humane traps which were completely ineffective - the chocolate buttons in the traps didnt work as people had said they would.

In the end there was only one thing for it, industrial strength poison! And then i discovered one last hole that had been missed first time round so filled that up and then poisoned one and caught one and set it free outside.

Phew!

So managed to deal with the problem at the cost of one death, which was cool.

I was slowly going mad i remember - they are crafty buggers - i was convinced they were trying to drive me out of my own home!

Jules · The biggest Geldof fan in the world, bar none!

We are never more than 6 feet away from a rat. It would be good to be less than 6 feet away from a Boomtown Rat. I trust you won't get Bubonic plague from that type of rat.

Noel, maybe it is their sheer numbers (the small rodent not the Boomtown variety biggrin

) and their capacity to pass on nasty diseases that makes them sinister to some.

So far you are the only Rats fan to admit to this phobia??? biggrin

noelindublin · Loudmouth

Jules wrote:

We are never more than 6 feet away from a rat. It would be good to be less than 6 feet away from a Boomtown Rat. I trust you won't get Bubonic plague from that type of rat.

Noel, maybe it is their sheer numbers (the small rodent not the Boomtown variety) and their capacity to pass on nasty diseases that makes them sinister to some.

So far you are the only Rats fan to admit to this phobia???

What about Rat Scabies, the drummer with The Damned. Bet he always impressed the ladies with that name.

Spiders or snakes don't make me shudder- I occasionally catch one of the David Attenborough type programmes with strange insects or animals. There are loads of strange species of animals in the lesser explored parts of the world like Papua New Guinea and Madagascar- animals which have evolved differently due to their relative remote location- and a lot of these are very weird and unusual looking.

PS- Glad Joan got her rat problem sorted - it seems like it was quite nasty- she had to call ratbusters.

-- Edited by noelindublin on Wednesday 5th of January 2011 03:03:33 PM

suss · In the Long Grass

There's an article in today's Metro (free commuter paper in London and other cities) about a couple who will feature in a Channel 4 documentary on Friday 28th Jan (time not given) called First Cut: Head over Heels in Rats. Apparently they own 28 of them and 'they make fantastic pets'

Might be of interest or fuel this debate, plus there's got to be a fair chance of hearing a Boomtown Rats song somewhere along the way surely.

JoanOfArc · The Fine Art of Surfacing

Btw i still suffer post traumatic stress from my experience with the rodents........

eversince i met them at the football club i get heart palpatations...............

just shouldnt' be so sexy!

teehee