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Broadway couple celebrate their love of rats with new magazine

Thursday, February 11, 2010
By MARCIA WHITE

The Express-Times

Mil Scott admits she has "insane rat love."

She and her husband, André, share their Broadway home with more than a dozen of the furry, but often maligned creatures.

Mil recently released the first issue of her own magazine, The Rodent Reader Quarterly: A Magazine of AristocRATS, Artists o' RATS and Insane RAT love.

The couple, who own a landscaping layout and design company, say they have been animal lovers "forever." They also have a horse, dogs and cats. In 2005, fate led them on a snowy March day to discover a domestic rat shivering beneath a mailbox at the post office down the street from their house.

André stretched out his hand. The animal climbed up. After seeking the help of veterinarian Dr. Robert Blease from Common Sense for Animals in Franklin Township, Warren County, for tips on care, the Scotts named the rat Molly and welcomed her into the family.

Little did they know, Molly was pregnant. She soon gave birth to two sons.

"I feel like I'm a rat person because they need people," Mil explained. "People think they're so scary. They're just like a dog."

But, unlike dogs, rats have short life spans, usually about three years, André says.

"That's not their fault," Mil replies when asked how she copes with bonding with her rats, then losing them to old age in just a few years. "I want to give them the best life I can. I think they're good to remind people to live every day."

So, the Scotts' rat family is often changing and evolving.

They recently adopted a young rat they named Rain, from Common Sense for Animals.

Blease, who says he's known André since his childhood, says he hasn't met anyone through his 43 years in practice who are bigger rat enthusiasts.

"Not to the extent they are, in the publishing business," Blease says. "I have had other people whose rats I've cared for. One gentleman, when his rat died, he had a nervous breakdown."

In the Scott home, a plastic baby pool lined with wood chips serves as a play area. There are boxes and toys inside. Some of the rats snooze in the boxes. Others see humans approaching and watch intently, even scampering to the side of the pool, standing on their hind legs and holding the lip of the pool with their petite front paws to get a better look.

André picks up one of the creatures and kisses it gently on the top of the head.

Mil shows off Ruby, a "Dumbo" variety (named for its ear shape), with a silky, silver coat.

Much like dogs and cats, rats can have special types of coats and markings. There are even rat fanciers clubs and owners and breeders show the animals, Mil says.

Mil doesn't show any of her rats. She hopes by her magazine, and through its writing, art and photography, she can help remove some of the stigma attached to the animals and possibly "save them from the feeder tank at the pet shop."

One of Blease's sons once kept a rat colony at the veterinary office, he recalls. He said it was fascinating to see the family relationships the rats developed. "It's very much like people, they care for their own. We can learn something from them."

Though, Blease admits, the rats were kept to later be fed to a snake they kept. But, he adds, "Anyone who surrenders a rat to us, we would keep it until it could be adopted out." Rats-as-snake-food is a sad fact but part of nature is keeping "everything in balance," he said.

In addition to being snake food, rats have been vilified since the Dark Ages, when they were blamed for spreading the plague. That's not correct, Mil says. It was fleas that carried the plague, she says.

"Rats universally scare people, possibly because they have a long history of carrying fleas with the plague, which killed a quarter of the world's population at a time," Blease says. Rats also were disliked because they helped themselves to the human food supply. That's why cats became revered in ancient Egypt, for protecting the pharaohs' grain, he added.

Common Sense for Animals has a subscription to the new rodent magazine, and clients who come in have taken subscription cards. "Sometimes people are shy to admit they like rats. Other people will think they're strange," Blease says.

Since the first issue came out at the beginning of the year, Mil, who also is a freelance writer, is pleased with how it is being received.

Washington Borough Library is carrying the magazine, and Mil says she has even received fan mail from a psychology professor in New York.

But she's clearly most beaming when she and André talk about their tiny, long-tailed, family members.

"They don't need much more then love," André says.

"That's all they need -- food and love," Mil adds.

Marcia White is features editor for The Express-Times. She can be reached at 610-258-7171 or by e-mail at [email-masked].

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