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RATS!!!!
By: Stevan Budi
I will never forget my first day working in a research lab. During the summer of my
freshman year, I was fortunate enough to be one of the few people that participated in the Howard
Hughes research program where I was able to work under the guidance of an established
neuroscientist.
Entering the lab for the first time, I was both impressed and overwhelmed by the space.
Unlike the lab seen in Frankenstein and other old movies, this lab was a well-lighted, “fairly” clean
space, being able to accommodate around 5-7 people at a time. The typical black bench tops where
half-empty beakers and used pipettes lied in a clutter mess, ran across along the wall surrounding the
room. However out of all the things in the room, what really caught my attention was a door that
was tucked away at the far side corner of the room. At first glance, it looked like any other door; a
door that would lead to another lab or even a bathroom. Still though there was something about it
that gave me the chill.
Before I could explore the lab further, my attention quickly turned to the main entrance of
the lab where a woman in her early thirties just entered the room. Her brown hair tied up in a
ponytail, slim figure, running shoes, and the yoga mat in her hand led me to believe that she was at
the gym earlier that morning. The first thought that came to my mind was that she must be either a
graduate student or a post doctorate that worked here in the lab. With this in mind I asked, “Could
you tell me where Dr. Bilbo is or let her know that I’m waiting here for her?”
To this request, she started chuckling to herself as her cheeks turn somewhat pinkish in
color. Wait, did I enter the wrong lab by accident? As I was about to reach to my book bag to
double check for the room number, the woman explained to me in that she was the person that I’ve
been looking for all this time, Dr. Bilbo. She also told me in a friendly manner to not worry about
making that mistake and to some degree appreciated the fact that I’ve mistaken her for a graduate
student or a post-doc.
She led me to her office across hall where she filled me in on the different experiments that
were being conducted in the lab. Feeling a bit overwhelmed, I was trying my best to absorb all the
concepts that were thrown at me: working memory, immune system, long term memory, etc. She
went over the materials so fast that by the end of the talk when she asked me if I had any question
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for her, I was really tempted to ask her to repeat the whole thing over again. How did she measure
the activity of the human brain again? Nah…., I’ll just read about it online later today.
After the talk, she decided to introduce me to the rest of the lab members, which weren’t
that many at the time. At this point, I thought to myself, “Well, this is as far as she’s going to go.
From here, she would just hand me off to one of these post-doctorates who probably teach me
everything else. It was nice meeting you, Dr. Bilbo”. However to my surprise, she continued on
with the tour of the lab. Instead of her just simply telling me, “O that’s a fridge, that’s a pipette,
etc”, she taught me ways to operate the different gadgets in the lab ranging from the simple “handydandy” pipette to the more complex microtome, a machine that cut the human(?) brain into thin
slices.
It was near the end of the tour where we finally got to the door.
“And this is the room where we housed all the rats for the experiment,” she introduced the
room.
“R..a….t…s…., you said?” I asked her with a soft, trailing voice, hoping that I might’ve
misheard her.
“Of course, how else are we going to do our experiment?” she answered calmly as if it was
not a big deal.
IT IS A BIG DEAL. I screamed at her in my head loudly. The first image came to my
mind was the typical sewer rat-a dirty, vicious creature of the night that always steal food from
others. Setting this aside for a moment. It could’ve been a cute looking puppy for all I care and I
still would have a problem with it. Why? I have a zoophobia, or in a less technical term, I’m terrified
of animals, all of them. My phobia could be traced all the way back to the time when I was in
elementary school in Jakarta.
It all happened so fast. One minute, I was walking back from school. And the next, I was
running for my life after I saw a stray dog1 charging straight at me at full speed. “Pergi!! Pergi!!”2 I
yelled out in confusion while still trying to process the situation.
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Stray animals especially dogs are very common in Jakarta
Translation in English: “Go away!!! Go away!!!!”
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Being a fairly agile and energetic 9-year old kid, I figured that I would be able to outrun the dog or
drain the dog’s stamina eventually, leading to my safe escape. What a naïve idea it was. After
running for a full five minutes, I looked back with the hope that the dog would have stopped
chasing or at the very least would have fallen far behind.
To my surprise, it was still chasing me and it seemed to be determined more than ever to get
me. It was then when it really hit me as I realized for the first time that my plan might actually fail.
Fear started to take over my body. I could hear my heart beat clearly. Ba dump… ba dump… ba
dump.. Cold sweat started to flow down my cheek. Before long, tears from my eyes followed. As
my small body frame reached its limit, my pace started to slow down bit by bit. I made the mistake
of turning my head back and looking directly at the face of my fang bearing, drooling attacker; an
image that I’ve tried to forget ever since. Moments later, my right leg was shot with a painful
sensation.
“Don’t just stand there! Come in!” urged Dr. Bilbo.
The first thing that I noticed when I entered the rat room was the bad stench of the rat
feces, which penetrated through the mask that I was wearing. Disgusting. The actual room where
they kept the rats was of medium size, probably about the size of a dormitory room of a single
college student. The room was filled with lots of metallic racks on which the rat cages were stacked
on top of each other. The chattering amongst the rats didn’t help the atmosphere of the room
either; some were hustling and bustling around their cages, some were scratching on the side of the
plastic cage that they were in, while others simply stared at us with their cold red eyes and hissed at
us every once in a while. Well, maybe we don’t have to touch and handle these rats. Maybe we only
have to observe their activities.
“Dang it, I do have to handle them,” I thought to myself as I saw Dr. Bilbo took one of the
plastic cages from the rack and placed it on an empty table in the middle of the room. As she slowly
opened the top of the plastic cage, I could see the rats inside energetically jumping up and down in
their cage hoping that they might be able to jump high enough in order to escape from the cage. To
my surprise, one of the bigger rats managed to grab on the ledge with its forelimb, which freaked me
out a bit. After gently pushing the rat into its cage, Dr. Bilbo proceeded in showing me how to
handle the rats.
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“The best way to handle a rat is to grab the rat by its tail, but make sure you grab the base of
the tail and not the tip. If you grab the tip, you might accidentally pull out the tail from the rat. And
you don’t want to anger these rats,” she said while demonstrating the proper technique to handle a
rat.
“Now you try it,” she told me
I stood in fear, frozen by this request. Should I make a run out of the lab? Should I pretend
that I have an allergy to the rats? Feeling a bit woozy and nauseous (partly because of the strong
stench that’s coming from the cage), I decided to give it a go at the rats, maneuvering my hands
carefully above the cage. I tried to find a good angle of attack where the rats wouldn’t be able to see
my hands coming but it proved to be an impossible task as there were multiple rats in the cage; one
of them was bound to look at my hand.
“You have to get in there, just be quick and snappy about it,” Dr. Bilbo ordered me.
Easy for you to say. You’ve probably done this countless times already and could probably
do it in your sleep if you want to. I told her, of course not directly but only in my head. Anyway
after a couple more minutes more idleness, I could clearly see the clear frustration in her face, urging
me on every other second. I decided to take a stab of it and lowered my hand in the cage. I don’t
know if it was just pure bad luck or the technique in which I maneuvered my hand or the brief
hesitation that the rats felt from the handler or the combination of all of them but as I touched one
of the rats by the tail, it turned around quickly and looked at me with its icy gaze.
Then, it bit me.
“Are you ok?” said Dr.Bilbo with the slightest concern in her tone. Judging from her
reaction, this sort of things probably happened a lot in the lab. She grabbed my hand, looked at it
for a moment and said casually, “You’re fine, it barely pierced through your skin. Even if it did,
these rats have been tested and are free from rabies. No worry. Do you want to try again?”
Shocked by this, I said, “Maybe tomorrow…..?”
Reflecting back that night, I realized that the psychological effect of that event was really
powerful. It revoked the feelings and sensation that I’ve tried to bury deep in the back of mind all
these years, forcing me to confront my irrational fear. What was I really scared of again? the pain?
the unpredictable nature of animals? the feeling of helplessness? I’ve been so busy all these times in
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trying to forget the traumatic event that I’ve never actually step back and try to understand the
nature of my fear, an important first step in overcoming my phobia. This bite did just that.
Having said these things though, my fear didn’t disappear overnight. It didn’t really matter
how much I tried to rationalize my fear, I still had that nervous feeling around rats for the first
couple weeks of the program. However through time, I was comfortable enough to observe and
learn different methods to distract the rats (by banging on the side the cage, etc) while picking and
handling each rat. Eventually through constant exposure or as psychologist would call it “systemic
desensitization”, my fear lessened more and more throughout the summer, allowing me to work
more efficiently with my subject and thus leading to the completion of my summer project.
Acknowledgment:
I want to thank my writing group – Angela Yun, Ben Soltoff, and Gabi Dimarco – for helpful suggestions
throughout the different drafts. I also want to thank Prof. Harris for the constant encouragement and
insightful feedback.