Word Count 655 Reading Time 2.6 minutes
Here’s another Tom Hoobyar story. This one both strikes a chord and makes me chuckle every time I read it. I can just picture those befuddled scientists realizing, with utter disbelief, what the rats were up to.
Like Henry Ford said, “If you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.”
Enjoy,
Tom Dotz
“Impossible”.
What a funny word. It’s a word that creates its own reality.
“I can’t do that – it’s impossible!”
Yeah, right.
Let me tell you about some rat cages I saw in a research lab years ago.
I was the founding CEO of a company that manufactured high-frequency pest repelling equipment, and as part of my research, I had occasion to tour some animal testing labs.
I was looking for a place to do some tests on rodent hearing and behavior, and I wanted the best. At that time, Stanford Research International (SRI) in Menlo Park was one of the top labs on the West Coast.
The guy who led me through the labs was a scientist, and we had a fascinating time that afternoon. I saw my breath hatch a million flea eggs from across the room in one lab.
But that’s another story. What I wanted to tell you about right now was what I learned about rats.
We were passing some empty labs and I noticed a pile of shiny steel cages near the door.
“Are those new cages for rodents?” I asked.
“Nope, those are waiting to get recycled. They will melt them down and re-use the steel. They’re no good.”
They looked brand new to me.
“What’s wrong with them?” I asked.
“C’mere and look at this” he said. He opened one of the cages and pointed to a spot near the rear corner. It looked a little more polished than the rest of the cage.
“Watch this.” He said. He pushed his finger against the steel wall of the cage, and it poked right through like it was tin foil!
Then he explained. “You see, the rats don’t know that it’s impossible for them to get out of these steel cages. So as soon as we put them into the cages, they go to the rear corner and start gnawing.”
“That’s ridiculous.” I said, “Steel is harder than rat’s teeth.”
“Right, but the rats don’t know that. So they gnaw at the back corner, wearing their teeth down. And their teeth keep growing all during the rat’s life. And they keep gnawing, day after day, week after week, gradually wearing away their teeth, but also removing a few molecules of steel.
“When a rat dies it is replaced, and the new rat goes to the same corner and starts where the other rat left off. After a couple of years, the cages all get like this.
We have to throw them away.”
He opened another cage and invited me to test the spot at the rear corner, and I also found the polished spot and pushed, and my finger just poked through.
“We have an instrument that measures the thickness of the cage walls, and when they get this close to breakthrough we remove them from service.”
There were piles of shiny steel cages that had been destroyed by rats.
I’ve thought a lot about those lab rats during the years since I toured SRI. I thought about the mindless faith they must have had, that they could gnaw their way out of those steel cages.
Day after day, rat after rat. Until the steel finally gives in to the softer – but more persistent – rat’s teeth.
The rats never knew it was impossible. They just kept using the tools they had, their teeth, until they had defeated the most sophisticated research lab on the West Coast.
And they were just rats. But they never gave in, never gave up. They just kept at the impossible until it became inevitable.
If a rat can do that what can we accomplish, if we decide to maybe rethink our ideas about what’s impossible?
I invite you to think about what you may have dismissed – too soon – as impossible.
Perhaps you too can turn the impossible into the inevitable.
You don’t want to let a rat outthink you, do you?
Seeya,
Tom Hoobyar
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I enjoyed this story, Tom! I like this picture of “The rats didn’t know it wasn’t possible.”
It’s a good story explaining mindset. But they weren’t “just” rats. They are so smart, we just don’t understand them. We rescued 3 little female rats from a Psych class which were destined to be gassed. One of them learned to open a zipper on my bag to get out a treat (by herself). They were clean and sociable and loved being petted. The middle one made beautiful nests out of pieces of newspaper and when she died, the other took over and built the nest. Since the smart one was allowed to walk around (she came when I called like a dog) she got into a previous tenant’s rat poison they had put under the stove. They died a slow and painful death with one losing an eye when she bumped into something because their blood could no longer coagulate.
Liked the story however and was glad you were not producing rat poison but a more humane solution.