Rats

It was time he moved out, moved on, generally got his life reconstituted. New job, new house, new relationship – certainly an end of this current madness.

The one good thing about working in a laboratory where they tortured animals without end – and as far as one’s psychic and spiritual well-being there had to be some significant compensation – was that in the lunchroom he could sometimes talk to the scientists, the psychologists, the experimental ecologists about their ideas.

It had long been known that, given access to a lever that dispensed cocaine, laboratory rats would push that lever without cease and snort coke until they died a seemingly miserable death. It was an irresistible addiction.

It took an imaginative scientist to wonder if that was really inevitable. What is the life of a laboratory rat in general? – a small, sterile cage; no elbow room; loneliness; a lack of social interaction and family ties; endless sameness; endless lack of conformity with his or her own nature. And more – one scientist had constructed cages that measured the pressure that the rats’ feet applied to the floor. That was for use in experiments to measure how much pain the rats could endure but it revealed a coincidental fact – when a human walked into the room the rats started walking on tiptoe.

The imaginative scientist built what she called a ‘rat park’ – soil, plants, sunlight, dark, tunnels, space, nooks, unconstrained social interaction, freedom … and then, the cocaine lever. The rats tried it once and then got on with their lives. It was time to move on.


Dhiraja