When Flowers go Wrong

**SPEAKER_2** (0:08)
You're listening to Strange by Nature, your guide to the strange, weird, unbelievable and improbable wonders of the natural world.

**Kirk Mona** (0:23)
Hello, everyone, and thanks for being here today. I'm Kirk Mona, and joining me are Rachel Gimza and Victoria Thompson. We're all naturalists who together have scoured the world for weird and wonderful wonders, just to please your mammalian brain's desire for novelty. Isn't that nice?
Let's do this.

**Rachel Gimza** (0:42)
Hello, hello, hello, everyone. We're all here this week. It's super exciting.

**Kirk Mona** (0:47)
Hey! That is correct, we're all here.

**Rachel Gimza** (0:49)
Yay, welcome back, Kirk. We're glad you're here.

**Kirk Mona** (0:52)
Thank you, thank you. It was a trying few weeks there, but I am back. And we're glad you're here.
Good to be here.

**Rachel Gimza** (1:03)
So recently, as you both know, I bought my first home, which is super exciting. And as you both probably know, as happens when you become a homeowner, it becomes the main topic of conversation at any particular... If you're sitting at a table with other people who happen to own homes, that's what you're talking about.

**Kirk Mona** (1:31)
That is the common point of interest.

**Rachel Gimza** (1:33)
Exactly. Which, let me tell you, is a wild transition because I know that when I sit down and I talk with people, I'm mostly talking about all the projects and things that we're doing at the house. And that is the topic of conversation. But it's not even been a month, and I'm just sitting here like, what did I talk about before this?
I know I did. I know I talked about other things, but were they, I mean, they're probably weird animal fun facts that I recently learned, to be real honest. But that's just what happened. So I was in one of these conversations recently. I got together with another couple friend of mine with my partner, and we got to talking about pests. So the house that I'm in is over 100 years old, just over. And we've definitely had some small pest issues, like a mouse coming in and doing all sorts of fun things.
But we've not had anything bigger than a mouse, thankfully. Before we moved in, there was per chance a squirrel that was trying to make a nest in our attic, which we did not like. We did not like that.
So, but we've never, we haven't had to deal with anything bigger than a mouse at this point. And honestly, I'm not really worried about mice all that much. One of my cats is actually an excellent mouser. He's a little bit of a sadist. I might tell one of those stories in a bonus at some point. My god, he's a great cat, but oh my gosh, his name is Merlin. Anyway, so the couple they were talking with, they were also dealing with what they were.
The couple we were talking with, they were dealing with pests in their house. They could hear this sound in their walls. They were like, but it was bigger than a mouse. So they thought they were dealing with squirrels. Uh-huh. They, turns out, it was...

**Victoria Thompson** (3:38)
Guessing not squirrels.

**Rachel Gimza** (3:39)
Not squirrels. It was not squirrels. It was rats.

**Victoria Thompson** (3:44)
Oh.

**Kirk Mona** (3:46)
Oh, no.

**Rachel Gimza** (3:49)
Yeah. Yeah.

**Kirk Mona** (3:52)
That's not good.

**Victoria Thompson** (3:53)
Rats. Lots of rats.

**Rachel Gimza** (3:56)
So many rats. Oh, I won't get into the whole tale on this.
It was an ongoing like, because they didn't know it was rats for a while. And then once they figured out it was rats, they caught at least like five.

**Kirk Mona** (4:14)
Oh, the joy of living in the city.

**Rachel Gimza** (4:18)
Yeah. Anyway, so I won't get into the entire thing. The way that they told the story was pretty great, and apparently there was some trauma that happened, of course. And I rest assured, it has been resolved. They no longer have rats in their house. So we're really happy for them. But it got me to thinking about rats in general as it does. And then it made me look closer at my list, actually. And I realized that I've had a list.
I've had a rat on the list for a good while now.
And this felt like it was good at times ever to actually cover that particular rat.

**Kirk Mona** (5:01)
What a wild, security story to tell us you're talking about rats.

**Rachel Gimza** (5:05)
You're welcome. I thought it would be entertaining.
So first things first, I'm actually talking about an entire family of critters, not just rats of particular rat species. I am talking about the family of critters known as the Echimediae family.