Aw, rats!

Andrew Glazer

FAIRGROUNDS -- Next to cockroaches, they’re perhaps the most

universally loathed creature on Earth.

But representatives from two separate associations of rat lovers --

both showing dozens of breeds of the twitchy creatures at the Orange

County Fair -- say the prejudice is unwarranted.

“In Hollywood, they’re generic bad guys like Nazis and drug dealers,”

said Pat Mullins, who lives in Harbor City and owns three pet rats. “But

they’re really nice pets.”

That’s right -- pets that can learn to hoist a small bucket of food to

their cage, walk a tightrope and run to their owners when their names are

called.

“And they love to give kisses,” said Samantha Irwin, 13, owner of two rats, Orville and Templeton. A rat kiss, for those who haven’t had the

privilege, is a snout poke and gentle nibble on the cheek or ear.

“I have two who are very kissy,” said Beverly Wolter, a Costa Mesa

native and board member of the Southern California Rat and Mouse Club of

America. “They’re very sociable. And they adopt the owner as the Alpha

rat of their pack.”

Pet rat owners are quick to point out that their furry friends are

very, very distant relatives of the cat-sized New York sewer-dwelling,

typhus- and bubonic plague-carrying wild rat.

“They’ve been domestic for generations,” said Wolter, whose eyes

appeared small and mouse-like beneath the large glasses she wore. “It’s

like comparing a wolf and a dog. You wouldn’t want a wolf playing with

your kids in the backyard, either!”

“They don’t get that big,” said Debbie Siegfried of Huntington Beach,

owner of nine rats -- at last count. “It’s dark and hard to see and

people get startled. They say, ‘Omigod, what just ran in front of me?’ ”

Ironically, the first documented pet rats were raised in the early

1800s by Queen Victoria’s royal exterminator, Jack Black, according to

American Fancy Rat and Mouse Assn. literature.

After 200 years of breeding, there are now blue, hairless, big-eared

and tailless varieties of rats. Rat owners exhibit their prized pets in

international rat shows and are zealous promoters of rats as pets.

“They’re really good for Gen-Xers,” Siegfried said as a 5-inch

black-and-white rodent, one of dozens up for adoption at the fair,

crawled across her shoulders and gave her a kiss. “I guess because

they’re not considered the traditional pet.”

The pitch worked on Carlos Betancourt, 34, who initially scrunched his

nose at one glass cage of beady-eyed gray rats. “They’re actually pretty

cute,” he said after petting one. “I guess the catch, though, is you

can’t also own cats.”