Rats – Scary or Cute?

Kevin heeft komende week weer een spreekbeurt /speech, die dit keer over ratjes gaat. De vraag is, zijn ratjes eng of schattig? Hierbij de notities voor zijn betoog.

Hello, everyone! Today I will be talking about rats, to find out if they are scary animals or cute.

Let’s start with the scary part. When people are very scared of mice or rats, it is called muso-phobia. ‘Muso’ sounds a bit like mouse and ‘phobia’ is fear of something; so muso-phobia is fear of mice or rats. The first doctor to treat a patient with this phobia was Dr. Genna Crosser. Interestingly, she later suffered from this phobia herself. Some of you may also be scared of rats. Maybe because they have a long tail. Can you tell me a few other reasons why people could be scared of rats?
<Fellow students to call out 3-5 reasons in total, for example they can bite, they have sharp nails, they carry diseases, some have spooky red eyes, they run around really fast, etc.>

One reason why people may be scared of rats, is that they once carried a disease called the black plague, which killed millions of people in the 14^th century. The black plague was carried around by fleas living on black rats, which travelled on ships to new destinations. Luckily nowadays the black plague is almost gone and the rats we see here in Canada don’t carry the plague.

Today, there are 2 types of rats. Wild rats (the ones that live outside), and domesticated rats (also called pet rats). Let’s look at some pictures of cute pet rats. <show pictures>
As you can see, pet rats aren’t scary at all. They are really cute and fuzzy.

We have 4 pet rats at home. Their names are Scout, Mikey, Leo, and Sven. We used to also have Jem but he died 2 months ago. Rats usually only live for 2-3 years and Jem was 2 years old.

For those of you who would like to have pet rats, this is what you’ll need: A big cage for them to live in, with toys and hammocks, special rat food and a water bottle. Get at least 2 rats because they need a friend to play and cuddle with while you’re at school or asleep. Then you get to play with them and take care of them.

I hope you will agree with me that rats aren’t scary, but very cute!