Ratted Out

We humans always try our best to understand the world around us. Sometimes that leads to new benefits, and sometimes it leads to misunderstandings.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcomed Aaron Mankey's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I
Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is full
of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet

(00:27):
of Curiosities. It's easy to love furry, fluffy animals like dogs, cats,
and rabbits. There are pets and family members, and they're
responsible for some of the best videos on the Internet.
But so many animals are misunderstood and maligned simply for

(00:50):
acting the way nature intended. People didn't think too much
about shark attacks before the nineteen seventies, but in a
film came out that changed the way you see the
water and what lies beneath it forever. Steven Spielberg's Jaws
was a runaway hit in the first official summer blockbuster,
but it also led to the decimation of shark populations

(01:11):
all over the globe. Each year, more than a hundred
million sharks are killed, sometimes for their fins, other times
out of fear that they may bite a human. Sure,
great whites take a nibble from time to time, but
not because we're tasty. It's because they think we're something else,
but they don't know for sure until they get a taste.
It doesn't matter whether they're snakes or sharks or spiders.

(01:34):
There are just some creatures that don't get any love
from us humans. I think it's because they haven't had
the right kind of pr Take the rat, for example, Tiny, furry,
and very smart. According to the National Human Genome Research
Institute in Maryland, we have more in common with those
long tailed rodents than we do with other meat eating animals,

(01:55):
and yet rats are often depicted as garbage eating scavengers
full of disease. After all, they were believed to be
the source of the Black plague for hundreds of years
until it was proven that the fleas on their backs
were the real cause of the spread. But one Canadian
province hated rats so much it went to extreme lengths
to get rid of them forever. Alberta is the sixth

(02:17):
largest Canadian province and is responsible for billions of dollars
in agricultural exports each year, so it's important to keep
its farms free of pests. That's why in nineteen forty two,
the Ministry of Agricultural and Food instituted the Agricultural Pests
Act of Alberta. It stated that any creature or critter
posing a threat to the province's farms was officially put

(02:40):
on a to kill list. Rats were added in nineteen
fifty They had come from Eastern Canada scurrying their way
to Alberta to feed on grains, scraps of food and crops,
and people were ready. It took a year or so
to prepare, with the province going to great lengths to
educate the public on how the problem was going to
be addressed. They held conferences, handed out brochures and put

(03:03):
up posters all over the municipalities, specifically in high risk
areas like train stations and schools. From June of nineteen
fifty two until July of the following year, Alberta spread
more than a hundred and forty thousand pounds of arsenic
trioxide powder. Thousands of buildings and farms along the province's
eastern border were covered in it. The local human population

(03:25):
wasn't too happy about the treatment, as the powder didn't
just affect the rodents. People, pets, and livestock were also
hurt by it. Despite the government, telling them that only
the rats would be affected. Over the ten years that followed,
the rat population skyrocketed until it finally stopped around nineteen
fifty nine. Infestations then plummeted. From nineteen sixty to nineteen eighty,

(03:47):
the number of live rat infestations fluctuated, but were never
as high as they were before and during the nineteen fifties.
This was mostly due to the work done by the
Agriculture and Food Ministry, but nature also played a part.
You see, certain mountainous and forested areas outside of Alberta
have made it difficult for rats to make it into

(04:08):
the province. It's also illegal for anyone in Alberta to
own a rat. Research laboratories are only allowed to have
them with special permits. Because of all the hard work
in eliminating rats over the previous fifty years, two thousand
two marked the first year in Alberta's history without a
single rat infestation. The next five years saw only two

(04:28):
infestations crop up, and they were dealt with swiftly. Alberta
was basically rat free ever since, well, except for a
freak accident in two thousand four, when someone with almost
a dozen domestic Norway rats released them into a Calgary neighborhood.
The locals wasted no time. Like the angry mob at
the end of Frankenstein, they chased every last rodent down

(04:49):
with brooms and shovels before they had a chance to reproduce.
The person who set them free initially was never discovered,
although that might be a good thing, considering that they
might have met a similar or treatment not many people
know that rats are smart, resourceful, and even loyal. They're
like tiny dogs, but they're maligned because of what they
really are, reproductive eating machines. It's hard to blame the

(05:12):
people of Alberta for how they reacted to the threat
that rats pose to their crops. But the next time
you encounter one in a pet store or even on
a subway platform, watch it. See how it learns and
figures out how to operate in a world so much
bigger than itself. The rat doesn't know it's hated. It's
simply doing what the rest of us are trying to

(05:33):
do all the time, get through one more day and
survive the rat race. Life is full of consequences, big

(05:55):
ones too. Like the novel Futility, which discussed the sinking
of a fictional British ocean liner called the titan after
hitting an iceberg, a book by the Way that came
out fourteen years before the real Titanic met the exact
same fate. But sometimes it's hard to accept something as
a coincidence. When we look at how so many disparate
threads line up exactly the right way for something to happen,

(06:18):
we can't shake the notion that it wasn't an accident,
that maybe the coincidence had been planned all along. That
was the accusation facing British educator and crossword compiler Leonard
Daw in nineteen forty four. Daw was born in eighteen
eighty nine and got to start as an amateur football
player that's soccer for those of US state side. But

(06:40):
after the nineteen thirteen season he made two big decisions. First,
he joined the British Army to fight in World War One. Second,
he left football behind forever for a career in teaching.
For a few years after the war, Daw taught science
at a few different institutes around London, eventually settling in
nineteen six at Strands School, a boy's grammar school in

(07:02):
South London. But a year earlier, he had also taken
a different job as a crossword compiler for the Daily
Telegraph newspaper. He was tasked with composing new clues every
day and assembling them into a complete puzzle. He juggled
both jobs for nearly twenty years, teaching kids science while
coming up with five letter words for things like displeasing.

(07:23):
But one day, in early June of nine, dag got
a rude awakening. A pair of agents from m I five,
the British Security Service, arrived at his school looking for him.
They took him in for questioning, along with a coworker
from the newspaper. Locked in a small room for days,
Dawes was subjected to lines of questioning about his occupation,

(07:43):
not as a teacher, but as a puzzle maker. You see,
the agency had noticed some odd things about several cross
words over the past year. In one from early May seventeen,
Across asked for a four letter word for one of
the United States. The correct answer in that particular puzzle
it was Utah. A few weeks later, three Down wanted
a five letter word meaning red Indian on the Missouri.

(08:07):
The answer that filled the boxes perfectly, oh mahaw and
the puzzle just one week after that featured an eight
letter answer Overlord. Now separately, these clues and answers didn't
amount to anything, they were just words, but together they
took on a whole new meaning because oh mahaw happened
to be the code name for one of the beaches

(08:27):
that the Allies planned to storm on June six, otherwise
known as d Day. Utah was another. Other answers, like Gold,
Juno and Sword were code names for beaches that the
Canadian and British forces were also planning to land on,
and every one of them had shown up in a
Daily Telegraph crossword puzzle during the year. The most important

(08:50):
answer of although Overlord, was the name of the whole
Allied operation, which involved the cooperation of all three countries,
and since Daw had been responsible for each of the
puzzles creation, he was officially their prime suspect. M I
five kept him for hours, asking about his allegiance and
whether he had been contacted by Nazi agents. Despite his

(09:11):
service to his country in World War One, it was
feared that he had been turned, but Daw answered their
questions as truthfully as he could. No one had been
in touch from the other side, they were just puzzles.
The m I five agents persisted, though, sure that this
had to be more than a coincidence, and yet no
matter how hard they pushed, Daw wouldn't break. Earlier that year,

(09:34):
a pamphlet published by the Nazis and distributed in southern
England outlawed how German spies had hidden the identity of
one of Hitler's secret weapons in the black squares of
a crossword puzzle. The British agents were certain the Nazis
were up to their old tricks again now, but they
didn't have any solid evidence. It took days of intense interrogation,

(09:55):
but by the end of it all they were no
closer to an answer than they had been at the start.
The good news was that nothing had been spoiled in
the publishing of those clues. When June six finally came,
the Allies successfully stormed the beaches of Normandy and went
on to win the war. Hitler didn't think the coastal
invasion was anything to worry about, so he didn't have

(10:15):
a large number of troops standing by, so had Leonard
Daw actually defected and turned traitor to help the Nazis
With crossword clues probably not, but while he was being
questioned by m I five, Daw told them that he
sometimes had his students help him come up with clues
for the puzzles. Those same children lived in a part
of England with numerous American military bases nearby, and they

(10:38):
often overheard soldiers use certain words in conversation, so it
was likely that terms such as omaha and overlord were
heard in passing by the students and then told to
their teacher, Mr. Daw so that he could finish his puzzles. Sadly,
that explanation didn't remove the doubt and suspicion that followed
him for almost ten years after his arrest. But Leonard

(10:59):
Daw was no trader. He was simply an innocent bystander
who found himself in a puzzling situation. I hope you've
enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe
for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the
show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was

(11:23):
created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with How Stuff Works.
I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
a podcast book series and television show, and you can
learn all about it over at the world of lore
dot com. And until next time, stay curious, ye