Paula, well, here it is, such as it is. Poem is at end; you can
whatever you want with the rest. Hope the photo of Notch came through
A Netsuke in the Museum Store: 5 rats with designs on a bag of grainIn
the Museum store, there are 6-7 copies of Netsuke ("toggles" in
Japanese) from the Peobody and Essex Museum in Massachusetts. Most are
very carefully carved, and all are made of resin--which has a very nice
heft: heavier than ivory, lighter than porcelain, and seems to take
tones very nicely, though most of these netsuke are some variation of
black lines on white body. They are $20 a piece (and almost $3 off with
a 20% reduction).
There are three of them with a rat theme, and
my favorite is Bag of Grain with Rats. Five rats. Each rat is so
carefully carved, in spite of its diminutive size, with its beady little
eyes bulging, And there are tiny white marks on either side of the face
to represent whiskers; one rat has burrowed into the bag, and only his
bottom, with its pendant tail, sticks out, while on the other side, one
has just poked his head out of the bag, The other three are in various
stages of readiness to take the plunge. Or gnaw.
This is the year of
the Rat in Japan, and he is the first sign of the Japanese Zodiac,
representing fertility and wealth, an emblem of good luck, and companion
to the god of wealth, Daikoku. No wonder there is a preponderance of
rat-netsuke in our selection.
Oh yeah. And Ganesh rides on one.
Eventually,
I bought two for presents: one for John Stucky, the librarian who holds
the museum together, and one, later, for my friend Sid, who is a
computer whiz, the Placer Street Quilters' best quilter, etc, etc. When I
told him about the rat-netsuke I got for John, he said:
"Are they anatomically correct?"
"WHAT?"
"Male rats," he said, "have enormous testicles."
"They
do? I never noticed." I mean, you're standing there, holding a dead
rat fresh from a trap or whatever. so you don't take the time to examine
its sex organs; you dash outside with it and throw it in the
bushes....and it can start fertilizing the soil.
"Maybe they are all
girl-rarts," I said crossly. I remembered that the rats on John's
netsuke didn't have large--in fact, ANY--testicles.
I e-mailed John about my conversation with Sid, and he sent me the following story:
My freshman year in college, my roommate, Robin Bullard rescued several lab
rats. We housed them in one of our bottom drawers. The males & females
were kept separate until we decided to transport all of the rats back to
Robin's house in Marin. We traveled from Stockton to SF via Greyhound, but
had to keep all of the rats together in a very small cage, camouflaged
inside a large shopping bag as animals were not allowed on the bus. I sat
with this stupid parcel on my lap and a drunk sleeping and drooling on my
shoulder all the way to the City (ca. 2 hours by bus from Stockton).
When we got the rats to Robin's house, everything seemed calm and normal,
but, throughout the night there was a lot of noise, scurrying and
skirmishing, coming from that little cage. The next morning, the boy rats
had transformed. Their testicles were so big that they could barely walk!
It was a very rapid and downright bizarre transformation for two young
hooligan bucks like me and Robin to witness. Them womens always drives
mens CRAZY! YOW! ......& Jeeeez!
Yers,
SpuDd
I found the conversation and the e-mail very informative (and the e-mail very funny). But I wanted to know
Why,
so I Googled "Why are rats' testicles so big?" and I found out. It's a
case of "Survival of the ME," (Sperm Competition Theory) and is known
throughout the animal kingdom wherever a species lives together in large
bunches.
Rats have a
mating system in which multiple males mate with one female, especially
at higher population densities. When a female rat comes into heat,
she may be mated by multiple males in a short span of time. The male
with the biggest testicles will produce the most sperm, which means
he'll have a higher chance of fertilizing some of her eggs.
And they all lived happily ever after.
Explanation of Netsuke
Some of these rats are girl-rats
Some of these rats are boys
And some of these rats are transgender rats
And share all the other rats' sorrows and joys.
"Notch," because of the arrow on his head.
The original of Rats with Bag of Grain"