A story in the Mercury News says 1,000 rats have been “rescued” from a home in Los Angeles by the Humane Society. They were just transported to a shelter in San Jose:

San Jose was selected as the vermin Ellis Island because Andy’s had an empty 5,000-square-foot room. “It’s very hard to find a landlord who will let you move in with a thousand rats,” noted Paul, entering a maternity ward where litters of baby rats already were swelling the population. […] The hoarder whose home had been ground zero for the rat swarm was not identified but was said to be receiving “ongoing mental health support.” His daughter brought home one pregnant rat, and when it had babies, the litter was not separated by gender.

The story points out that, since this happened in Los Angeles, neighbors notified a TV reality show first instead of human or animal care services. That says something about America, but I am not sure what. Perhaps it is people are not being very sympathetic, let alone empathetic, to their fellow citizens. On that note…

I hate to be the one to bring this up but 1,000 orphan rats sounds like a good case for APOPO Detection rats technology.

The training of mine detection rats is one of APOPO’s daily core activities. The procedure consists of several consecutive training phases, starting from early socialization at the age of four weeks, to final internal accreditation on real mines on APOPO’s test and training fields. At each training stage the rats have to pass a “blind” test before continuing to the next level. In such tests, trainers do not know where mines or training samples are located.

The APOPO rats are used in African countries for TNT mine detection. America could help that effort by drafting these rats into service. Perhaps they could be trained for domestic work as well. Imagine how pleased passengers at airports will be to find the controversial imaging scanners replaced with a family of cute and friendly service rats.

“We always say the world is divided up into rat lovers and people who haven’t met a rat yet,” said Paul, who had already met hundreds, and even patted down a few.

Combine a rat sniff-security test with a reality show (Fear factor: TSA edition) and everyone wins. A foursquare badge for being rat-sniffed completes this post-post-post-modern security picture.