The Giant Florentine Rat Trap

Fresh back from a 10-day jaunt through Italy with Cousin A. and Cousin K. It was a trip filled with octopi, some unpleasant-smelling shells from the beach of the Adriatic Sea, expensive clear-glass pigs and colorful glass roosters, one extremely curly and spunky dog, a mosquito that showed up every night no matter which city our beds were in, a cool and cluttered bookstore filled with cats, and some veryvery (yes, that IS one word) large river rats.

Actually, I'm not sure that those giant rats were really rats or something that just looked like a giant rat. Whatever, they sure were interesting. It seemed that every walk we took through the city of Florence ended with us peering over the ledge of a bridge that crossed the Arno river, staring at those attention-grabbing creatures.

I first spotted one as he was swimming toward a small sand island that had formed around one of the pylons holding the bridge up. Initially, I thought he was a beaver. But once he crawled up on the spot of sand, it became very clear that he was no beaver. Instead of having a wide, flat tail, he had a narrow tail like any other city rat.

I watched him as he crept around the sand isle. The isle was also a resting spot for a number of seagulls, pigeons, ducks and geese. But the rat did not seem to disturb them, nor they him. They all went about their own business, unconcerned about their fellow inhabitants.

Here and there, the rat found a speck of something to eat. After about 15 minutes, he waded back into the water, found something there to eat, and then munched away for 10 minutes or so. When finished, he headed back out into the water.

He was an excellent swimmer. He seemed to know how to make the river current work for him no matter whether he wanted to head upstream or downstream. If he wanted to get downstream, he would swim out into the deeper part of the river where the current was strongest. If he wanted to get upstream, he would swim closer to the river bank where the current was not so strong.

He soon reached the right-hand bank of the river, crawled up onto the ground, and proceeded to clean and scratch himself. He was truly fastidious. He cleaned and scratched and cleaned and scratched.

Eventually, he got back into the water and swam upstream close to the river bank. After he had reached a point just past the upper tip of the little isle, he took a 90-degree turn out into the river and let the current take him back to the isle.

The giant rodent apparently fascinated Cousins A. and K. just as much as he did me. Every time we decided to head back to our hotel, some inner compass took us right past those rats. All three of us would lean over the bridge ledge or sidewalk wall overlooking the river in hopes of spotting the animal. And he never disappointed us. To be accurate, I should say they never disappointed us. We soon spotted at least four of them.

They were all about the same size, though one was distinctly more portly than the others. All four of them shared the same routine. They swam back and forth between the sand isle and the right-hand bank of the river, where they would either search for food (I got the impression that more than an ample amount of discarded food thrown in the river by tourists floated past them) or scratch and clean themselves.

The rodents appeared fully unbothered by us and all the other tourists hanging over the bridge to catch a glimpse of them. In fact, they seemed to acknowledge us if we stared long enough. They turned their eyes and heads up toward us, either to study us or, more likely, to encourage us to throw down something to eat. Yes, we fell for the trick and shared a few cookies with them. It was as if Florence had schemed up a giant rat tourist trap, and we were the ones that got caught. Nobody seemed to mind.