Scabbers/Wormtail: What Kind of Rat Am I?

[Caius Marcius]

No: HPFGUIDX 9207

--- In HPforGrownups at egroups.com, "Rita Winston" <catlady at w...> wrote:
> --- In HPforGrownups at egroups.com, "Caius Marcius" <coriolan at w...> 
> wrote:
> 
> > I've always pictured Scabbers as a sort of tame white lab rat, the
> > kind we ran through mazes in back in introductory psych class. 
> 
> So did I, until the x-th time I heard Jim Dale reading some scene 
or 
> other....
> 
> As for Scabbers, here's a quote from PoA (the revelations in the 
> Shrieking Shack): "for a moment, Scabbers was frozen in midair, his 
> small gray form twisting madly"
> 
> Earlier in PoA, in the Magical Menagerie shop on Diagon Alley, 
> where Ron buys rat tonic and Hermione buys Crookshanks, the 
> clever rats showing off in a communal cage on the counter are 
> described as black rats.
> 
> CoS: At the Burrow: "Ron's magic wand was lying on top of a fish
> tank full of frog spawn on the windowsill, next to his fat gray rat,
> Scabbers, who was snoozing in a patch of sun."
> 
> SS/PS: Harry meets Ron at King's Cross station: "Ron reached inside 
> his jacket and pulled out a fat gray rat"

Thanks for clarifying that, Rita: though I must say, I find the idea 
of Ron cuddling for several years with a *Mus rattus* infinitely more 
unsettling than Harry's Parselmouth talents (but then, I always kept 
snakes as a kid, and I would loved to be able to converse with them).

BTW, Chapter 11 of Hans Zinnser's Rats, Lice and History (1935) is a 
definitive exploration of the role that the rat has played in Western 
history.  Apparently, the rat entered Europe in relatively recent 
historical terms, perhaps as recently as 700 AD. 

    - CMC

  - CMC