No fear of the Rat

Looking up my prospects for the Year of the Rat, I was somewhat rattled to discover that my own sign of the Horse is the Rat’s worst enemy, so I should bite the bit in expectation of a rough ride over the next 12 months.

But "whoa!", I quickly said to myself, before my terror got out of hand, and I started reining in my fears with thoughts of the positive role that rats - if not Rats - have played in my life so far.

For a start, one of my all-time favourite characters in one of my all-time favourite tales, ‘The Wind in the Willows’, is Ratty, best friend and faithful companion of Mr Mole.

Then there’s the fact that my family and I once had a pet white rat, acquired from the Sydney University on his retirement as a champion maze-runner in psychology experiments, and which of course we named in the fictional Ratty’s honour.

Though by no means as immortal as his literary namesake, only living for three years or so as rats do, this real-life Ratty proved a model member of the household for the duration of his residence, and was sadly missed when he died.

In addition to this fond memory, a further factor inspiring my affection for the humble and industrious rat is how richly it has contributed to the colour and range of the English - and even more so to the Australian - language.

For example, if it weren’t for this unjustly-reviled rodent, I wouldn’t be able to invoke its name to say that I ‘smell a rat’ every time a member or crony of Barisan Nasional or any other deeply-suspect organisation says or does anything.

Nor could I characterise such sly and slippery customers so aptly with any other simile than ‘as cunning as shit-house rats’. Or more vividly convey the speed and urgency with which one of these people can move when he or she picks up the scent of easy money than with the classic phrase ‘like a rat up a drainpipe’.

And when some of these sleazebags gets their hands on lots of loot, they’re likely to make such tasteless displays of their suspiciously-gotten wealth, like lots of datins I’m sure you could name, or Datuk Zainal @ Zakaria Deros with his gross and vulgar mansion, as to personify the expression ‘as flash as a rat with a gold tooth’.

For many years I tried to ignore people like this and to pretend, like the rest of the so-called silent majority does, that I couldn’t ‘give a rat’s arse’ what they got up to as long as they left me and my family alone.

But I finally got so sick of these vermin, and so disgusted at the ever-growing toll they were taking on millions of good, honest, hard-working Malaysians’ lives and liberties, that I decided it was time to ‘go the rat’ and get after them.

Which, in brief, is how I came to be given the privilege of writing as Malaysiakini’s resident mat salleh , or if you prefer, rat salleh .

Not that I imagine this silly play on words or my earlier conciliatory remarks about rats, will spare me the bumpy ride that Master Lo’s website has warned me to expect as a Horse saddling up for a Rat year.

Antipodean animal signs

But I’ve thought of another way I just might be able to beat this Rat rap, which is to claim geographical and zoological immunity. The Chinese horoscope, like the Western one, is a product of the Northern Hemisphere, so way down south of here in Australia, perhaps it doesn’t apply.

Especially in light of another key factor - until the arrival of the orang putih in Australia only 200 or so years ago, it had been so isolated from the rest of the world for so many millennia that most of the 12 Chinese lunar-year animals were unknown here.

In fact only two, the snake and the dog - the latter commonly known as the dingo - are native to Australia. Nine more - the rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster and pig - have since been imported, and the dragon, as far as I’m aware, has yet to arrive.

The so-called ‘Tasmanian Tiger’ doesn’t count as an original as it is extinct and in any case it wasn’t really a tiger at all. And, while there were always flocks of male birds about in the old days, none of them were roosters of the species ayam ,

So you can see that, while 2006 was well and truly the Year of the Dog or Dingo down here as it was everywhere else, 2008 could, for all anybody knows, be actually in Australia be the Year of the Bandicoot, the Bunyip or the Frill-Necked Lizard rather than that of the Rat.

And the local equivalent of my birth-year of the Horse could well be the Possum, Echidna, Platypus, Wombat, or any of dozens of other weird and wonderful wildlife.

So I may not be in for such a difficult and trying 12 months after all, as long as I’m careful to avoid running into the Horse-Rat conflict by venturing North of the Equator.

On the other hand, my actual Antipodean animal sign, whatever it is, could still be in mortal jeopardy in this, the Australian Year of the Crocodile, Kookaburra, Cassowary, Cockatoo or whatever else it may happen to be.

But let me try and look on the bright side. Here’s wishing all my Malaysian family, friends and colleagues a happy, healthy and wealthy Year of the Rat.

And as ratty a result as possible for Barisan Nasional in the general election the prime minister seems determined to hold, despite evidence in the popularity polls that more and more supporters are joining former head Dr Mahathir Mohamad in deserting the sinking ship.