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Eating rats with Morgan Spurlock at Fantastic Fest 2016
09.26.2016
02:27 pm
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At this year’s Fantastic Fest in Austin the movie with the highest gross-out factor wasn’t a horror flick. It was the documentary Rats directed by Morgan Spurlock. As a New Yorker who braved the garbage strikes of the 70s, I know a thing a or two about rats. Rats as big as cats. I don’t like them. Spurlock’s film made me hate them. The disgusting little creatures are taking over the world and Spurlock has shot the film in ways that make the invasion as spooky as an episode of The Walking Dead. Using bursts of sound, night-vision photography, jump cuts, creepy point of view shots, skewed camera angles and Pierre Takal’s subtle but unnerving score, Rats shows us that reality can be far more horrifying than fiction.

I ran a few bars in downtown Manhattan in the 80s/90s. One was right near The Bowery. A giant 9000 sq.foot space. We had a serious rat problem. I came up with a somewhat effective solution. I offered my night clean-up crew $10 bucks for every rat tail they’d bring me. In the mornings when I got to work there would be a plastic bag containing dozens of rat tails in a box near the door to my office. One guy was picking them off with a .22 caliber rifle. No shit.

Some of the best moments in Rats feature battle-hardened exterminator Ed Sheehan who’s been in a Sisyphean war against the rat population in New York City for more than fifty years. He’s a cigar-chomping character right out of central casting. Here’s our next Netflix hero.
 


 
In addition to screening the film, Alamo Drafthouse had a special treat for the people attending Rats. Drafthouse chef Brad Sorenson prepared some delicious (so I’m told) rat curry. Here’s a shot of some stouthearted men (including Drafthouse CEO Tim League) chowing down on vermin vindaloo. Supersizing was not an option. Rats can carry up to 5 million viruses on just one of its tiny little gross rodent hands. So no rat sushi.
 

Photo: Scott Weinberg.
 
As repellent as the idea of eating rats is to westerners, the fact is that rat is a commonplace dish in many parts of Asia. One can see this as nature’s way of dealing with a rodent problem. As a vegetarian, the thought of eating a rat isn’t that much more repulsive to me than eating a chicken or veal calf. And all rats are free range and locavore. Rat is going to be the next foodie trend. Just wait.
 

Rat Thai-style goes nicely with red chili sauce.
 
Rats will be screening on the Discovery Channel on October 22.  Tune in. Just don’t watch while eating a TV dinner. Or anything else.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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09.26.2016
02:27 pm
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Ghost ship full of ‘cannibal rats’ heading for Scotland
01.23.2014
06:58 pm
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pihshtaedrats.jpg
 
If only the horror writer James Herbert were still alive, he could appear on breakfast news and daytime television telling us all how he had prophesied such bone-gnawing terrors in his book The Rats all those many years ago.

For last year, we heard of poison-resistant, mutant rats over-running the south-east of England. And now, we have a ghost ship drifting towards Scotland, with a crew of cannibal rats.

Cannibal Rats?

The Lyubov Orlova, a former cruise liner, has been drifting across the North Atlantic for almost a year. The vessel, built in Yugoslavia in 1976, was abandoned in a Canadian harbor after its owners failed to pay the ship’s crew.

Shipping authorities in Newfoundland tried to sell the vessel for scrap to the Dominican Republic—the ship’s hull alone was valued at nearly one million dollars. However, the Lyuov Orlova was accidentally cast adrift during a storm. The vessel then drifted out of Canadian waters and into the North Atlantic.

Since then this ghost ship has been drifting slowly eastward ever since, with its only passengers—hundreds of rats, who have (according to “experts”) have been eating each other to survive their long arduous voyage.

The Lyubov Orlova’s wayward course has been picked-up by signals sent on the 12th and 23rd of March 2013, when two lifeboats fell into the water. (Rats leaving a sinking ship?) A week later, an unidentified vessel was spotted on the radar heading towards Scotland.

The Sun newspaper quoted Belgian salvage expert, Pim de Rhoodes, who said in his best Quint from Jaws:

“She is floating around out there somewhere.

“There will be a lot of rats and they eat each other. If I get aboard I’ll have to lace everywhere with poison.”

According to The Independent, Head of the Irish Coastguard, Chris Reynolds “said the ship was more likely than not to still pose a threat.”

“There have been huge storms in recent months but it takes a lot to sink a vessel as big as that,” he said. “We must stay vigilant.”

It’s almost like the pay-off to The Thing from Another World, but this time, if you’re in Scotland, or Ireland, remember:

“Wherever they are. Watch the seas everywhere. Keep looking. Keep watching the seas!”

You get the picture…
 
htaedpihsrats.jpg
 
Now, in this video you can take a trip around the Lyubov Orlova, before it was a ghost ship full of cannibal rats!
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds
Mutant, poison-eating ‘Super rats’...coming soon!
 
Via the Independent

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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01.23.2014
06:58 pm
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If YOU stole this watermelon you’d better call Poison Control immediately!
10.15.2013
11:33 am
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Can you imagine if you worked at a Poison Control Center and got this phone call?! “Excuse me, I think I’ve just ingested a watermelon that was injected with rat pee full of steroids.”

Via reddit

Posted by Tara McGinley
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10.15.2013
11:33 am
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