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Posted: 02-02-2002 19:22 Post subject: Rat kings

Would someone please explain what a "rat king" is? I remember having heard the term sometime but I haven't been able to find any info on the net about it. Is it a term describing really large rats or is it supposed to be a cryptoid species of its own. Btw how large can rats grow? confused

Posted: 02-02-2002 20:37 Post subject:

A rat king is a bunch of unfortunate rats with their tails tied together. This is supposed to happen accidentely, and indeed it's hard to imagine anyone managing to do it on purpose. One can also have squirrel kings and presumably anything with a tail long enough can get itself into this (fatal) predicament. Sad

Posted: 02-02-2002 21:01 Post subject:

Terry Pratchett's 'The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents' has a Rat King in it.

There was also a Rat Queen who would seduce young men. She looked human except she had claws for nails and her eyes would catch the light in an animal-like fashion. The children of this union were said to have one blue eye and one brown. She tended to leave a bite on her 'unfortunate' male 'victim'.

Posted: 02-02-2002 21:37 Post subject:

I got that book for Christmas!

Posted: 03-02-2002 20:06 Post subject:

I did too!!!!!

And it put me off putting down rat traps in the barn for all of one week!!!!!

Then the rats took advantage of my kindness & I fought back!!! Mad

Posted: 03-02-2002 22:04 Post subject:

Ahhhg, syncronicity!

I was just looking around the semi official Prathcett site www.lspace.org and found these photos to explain:

ftp://ftp.lspace.org/pub/pratchett/images/misc/ratking.jpg

and an x-ray of the sae ratking at

ftp://ftp.lspace.org/pub/pratchett/images/misc/ratkxray.jpg

By the way, if there was any doubt about Pratchett being a fortean author it can be dispelled by going to the page I found these photos on:

http://www.co.uk.lspace.org/art/reference-art.html

Posted: 04-02-2002 16:11 Post subject:

King Rat - very good book. Totally irrellevant, but well worth reading.

Posted: 04-02-2002 16:23 Post subject:

Posted: 14-09-2012 00:25 Post subject:

Here's a squirrel king.

http://imgur.com/vrAYi

Posted: 14-09-2012 07:20 Post subject:

Posted: 18-09-2012 22:46 Post subject:

Unfortunately, the phpbb software doesn't offer a way of setting the size of an image (and the board's style sheet doesn't include a max-width property), so I've just taken the image out altogether.

Posted: 12-06-2013 19:53 Post subject:

Squirrel king, with pics.
http://metronews.ca/news/regina/702478/photos-regina-squirrels-stuck-in-a-sticky-situation/

Posted: 12-06-2013 21:46 Post subject:

They're saying that pine resin stuck their tails together, they have bushy tails so I can understand this happening, but what would cause rats tails to do the same? Or could it be that previous cases of rat kings were in fact squirrel kings?