Well, no, actually, it isn’t.
But the following post, which was first published quite a few years ago on Ricochet, seems germane again, given the situation in the city of my birth, which would be Birmingham, (historically–at least in part) Warwickshire, The United Kingdom.
Lord. There hasn’t been a “bin” (garbage) collection in Britain’s second largest city now for several weeks. And the photos, and the reports of the subsequent filth and verminous fallout are rather appalling.
All of it is (so it seems, and as are so many things in the UK these days) due to a “strike.” By somebody.
The very idea that “three million wheelie bins” (and that was as of April 3) have been left, full, to “rot in the streets,” would have sent my darling Auntie “Betty” up the wall. A Birmingham native for most of her life, she moved closer to her family in the last years of it, and became the heroine, and ultimate victor, of the “Battle of the Droitwich Wheelie Bins.” That sort of personal responsibility, coupled with accountability from local service providers (shout-out to my sister, who gave them no other option), seems totally missing in the latest instance.
As for darling Auntie Pat, who really was a Birmingham native, and remained so until her death at the age of 99, I should think the dear lady is rolling over in her grave. My grandparents (on both sides) ditto.
And as of this afternoon, Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner (don’t get me started) has called in the British military to help. TBC–for my friends in the United States who may find such a thing puzzling, she has ordered up the soldiers to intervene with a local metropolitan garbage collection crisis.
And they say Donald Trump is an authoritarian nutjob.
Here’s the original post from 2018:
While July 22 is celebrated as Rat Catcher’s Day in the United States and a few other countries, it’s not a festivity that has really caught on, and good luck finding a celebratory acknowledgement to send to your friend in the greeting card section of your local supermarket. As far as I know, there aren’t any fireworks, either.
It’s a day that commemorates one of the least favorite stories from my childhood, that of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, a story so redolent of evil with overtones of perversity that I pretty much deep-sixed it to the memory hole until this morning, when I came across a reference to this day.
If you’re not familiar with the story (parts of which date back to the thirteenth century), it goes like this: A young man dressed in patched and multicolored (“pied”) clothing appeared in the German town of Hamelin, very opportunely one day, and offered to rid the town of the infestation of rats that was plaguing it.
Anxious to solve an unhealthful and expensive problem, the local burghers were eager to contract for his services, promising him a handsome reward, should he be successful in his endeavors.
The piper (for such he was) removed his instrument from his pocket, played a merry tune on it, and led the rats to the Weser River, where all but one of them drowned.
At which point, the worthy burghers defaulted on their promise of payment, accused the piper of extortion by bringing the rats to the town in the first place, and sent him, penniless, packing.
A few weeks later (the legend in Hamelin has this happening on June 26), the piper showed up in the town again dressed all in green (red in some versions) while all the adults were in church, and played a tune of such sweetness on his pipe that all the local children were enchanted to follow him into a cave whose entrance closed up after them, and they were never seen again. Remaining behind were only three children, one of whom was lame, one deaf, and one blind, to tell the sad story to the bereft parents when they emerged from church.
Several variations of the story exist, especially on the theme of what happened to the children, with the most popular being that they were escorted to a paradisial setting and lived happily ever after; that they were led into the River Weser and drowned just like the rats; that they were returned to the bosom of their grieving parents after the town paid the piper several times the promised original amount; and that they formed a settlement in Transylvania.
I always loathed the story, whether reading it in a book of childhood fairy tales from the aptly-named Brothers Grimm, struggling through the original German of Goethe’s poem in school, or rounding out my understanding of Robert Browning in what passes for him, as an attempt at light verse. There’s just nothing nice about it. The adults are duplicitous and greedy. The piper is cruel and vindictive. The children are two-dimensional pawns. And by the end of it, I’m even feeling sorry for the rats.
Time, perspective, and additional information have altered, or at least broadened my view a bit. It’s apparent that something cataclysmic and tragic must have happened in Hamelin, starting with records describing the church window from about 1300, about which was written in 1384, “it is 100 years since our children left.” Other theories, some with legs, some pure speculation, center on an epidemic of plague-like illness, a mass drowning, an enforced emigration (deportation) by the feudal lord of dozens of his vassals, and a landslide that killed hundreds. We’ll never really know.
But. Rat Catcher’s Day.
It’s our day to express appreciation for those who help to keep our countryside, villages, towns and cities free from those pesky rodents (out here where I live, the Rat Control Officers I’ll be hugging today are named Am and Little Levi). We should especially honor Alberta, Canada which has officially declared itself a rat-free province, although I see as I write this that the capital city of Calgary is occasionally covered in embarrassment when a handful are discovered here and there within its boundaries. Oh, the horror! Still, no reason to stop trying.
It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it. So, rat catchers of the world, both two and four-legged, I salute you! Hugs all round. I’ll be raising a glass to you later today, most likely a dram of ratafia.
Now, what to eat with it. Ah. A nice piece of cheese. Yes, of course!
Happy Rat Catcher’s Day.
The photographs of the filth, and the pile-up, in a city that I love, and of which I have such fond family memories, are so dispiriting that I won’t post them here. They are easy enough to Google for yourself.
