Hello, is there a Pied Piper out there?<\/p>\n
JAKARTA (JP): He's a bit of a hyperbolist this Dutch friend of
\nmine, so when he started telling me this tale I thought 'Well,
\nhere we go, another shaggy dog story from Johan'. I wasn't far
\nwrong but it was a 'shaggy rat' story or rather a story about a
\nrat he thought was almost the size of a dog.<\/p>\n
I let him talk...it's best that way, especially when he's in
\nhis cups...and soon realized that he might have a point. He was
\ntalking about a rat he had seen here in Jakarta, a rodent 'the
\nsize of a small dog'.<\/p>\n
His florid face was pulsing with the telling of this, and
\nwhile I was allowing for a little exaggeration here and there I
\nconceded that there are rats of a quite extraordinary size in the
\ncity. Too many of them!<\/p>\n
And look at them for heaven's sake. Complacent? I'd say so.
\nComfortable? They are so damn complacent and comfortable that
\nthey wear top hats and doff them to you as they waddle by; 'Good
\nevening, all.'<\/p>\n
And have you ever seen a Jakarta cat in a close encounter with
\na rat? Fat chance. They've worked out a system of co-existence
\nthat would astonish the warring factions of the Middle East, and
\ndeliver sermons to the death-grapplers of Afghanistan and
\nNorthern Ireland.<\/p>\n
Friend Johan's temple was quopping, a blue vein throbbing as
\nhe went on. The rat he'd seen was half the length of the cafe
\ntable and probably big enough to pull a coach.<\/p>\n
As we shuddered mutually at the thought of this gargantuan
\nrodent, a thought occurred to me and not for the first time. Why
\ndoes the city government not put a bounty on the rat population
\nof Jakarta? Rp 500 for each tail, say.<\/p>\n
There are armies of mischievous little boys and unemployed
\nyouth out there who would gladly bring in tails by the score if
\nthe Jakarta city government would only put up a bounty. And they
\nwould have a social purpose far more broadly beneficial than
\nthose self-appointed youth traffic cops that mill the wind at U-
\nturns and intimidate motorists.<\/p>\n
Rats do not count as wildlife, except in the most banal sense.
\nThey are not likely to invoke the sentimentality of animal rights
\nactivists or prompt poets to compose couplets such as 'A robin
\nredbreast in a cage\/Sets all of heaven in a rage' (Blake).<\/p>\n
They are, after all, immemorially associated with the C14
\nBlack Death, the plague that swept out of Central Asia along the
\ncaravan trails to the Middle East and killed a third of the
\npopulation of Europe.<\/p>\n
Plague-ridden bodies figured in an early example of biological
\nwarfare, catapulted over the walls of Black Sea ports by Mongol
\nraiders to infect visiting Venetian and Genoese traders, who duly
\ncarried the contagion back with them across the Mediterranean.<\/p>\n
Even as recently as 1997 the World Health Organization was
\nreporting an outbreak of rat-borne plague in the Central Asian
\nrepublic of Kazakhstan. The whole impoverished former Soviet
\nregion was vulnerable to the disease, and with civil war raging
\nin Tajikistan and Afghanistan -- who would have relied on the
\nTaleban to take preventative measures? -- we could easily have
\nseen a major outbreak across a much wider area.<\/p>\n
Perhaps it is because the Black Death never penetrated the
\nMalay archipelago -- it is true there was an outbreak here in the
\nearly part of this century and again in 1945-1949 as a direct
\nresult of the Dutch blockade but not on the scale of the Black
\nDeath -- that officialdom here has such an insouciant attitude to
\nthe presence of rats.<\/p>\n
There is no folk memory among the people of these islands of
\nwhole districts being laid waste, of hard-earned granaries being
\ndestroyed by 'rattus rattus', that furry dark skulker in corners,
\ndrains and ceilings.<\/p>\n
In Britain, for example, the Plague is still recalled in the
\nchildren's rhyme, 'A ring, a ring of roses\/ A pocket full of
\nposies\/ Atishoo, atishoo, we all fall down'.<\/p>\n
Whatever the case, wouldn't it be nice to see a war on this
\npest get under way. And let the boys -- and girls, if they wish
\n-- of this city take some money home into the bargain. Perhaps a
\ncivic award for champion ratcatcher would be best of all. Out
\nthere in the slum districts of Manggarai or Tanjung Priok there
\nmust surely be one enterprising young person who would be happy
\nto be crowned 'Pied Piper of Jakarta'.<\/p>\n
I, for one, would rejoice at his or her coronation. And so too
\nwould Johan.<\/p>\n
-- David Jardine<\/p>", "url": "https:\/\/jawawa.id\/newsitem\/hello-is-there-a-pied-piper-out-there-1447893297", "image": "" }, "sponsor": "Okusi Associates", "sponsor_url": "https:\/\/okusiassociates.com" }