RAT

Like most of his neighbors, Terry Smith takes precautions.He doesn't put his trash out until Thursday, the designated garbage day for his West Ostend Street house, he keeps his yard free of trash and dog feces, and he makes sure his dog Brandy's food bowl isn't left outside overnight.But, Smith, a public safety advocate for the Southwest Empowerment Zone, said rats still rule South Baltimore's streets.Gloria Morton has lived in the same house in Franklin Square for all of her 65 years. The Social Security Administration secretary said rats have always been a neighborhood problem, but conditions have worsened in the past five years.

"WHATEVER YOU do, choose wisely and have the best intentions in mind. Be considerate of others and live life to the fullest" is the advice Joann Wheatley offered to her fellow graduates during Liberty High School's commencement exercises Sunday afternoon at Western Maryland College, where she was one of two student speakers.A series of books popular with middle school students was the inspiration for her address. "Choose Your Own Adventure" was her advice as she reflected on the choices one makes in life and the paths where those choices lead.

"I liked 'Fourth Grade Rats' by Jerry Spinelli a lot. The book is about a boy named Suds who wished he was still in the third grade, but his friend Joey wanted to be a fourth grade rat. This was the next step to becoming a man. Being a rat meant not being afraid of spiders, pushing little kids around and not crying anymore. By the end of the story the boys learned that just being themselves was more like being a man."-- Cassandra BurtonClear Spring Elementary"If you like adventure, read the 'Magic Treehouse' series by Mary Pope Osborne.

Editor's note: This retelling of ``The Three Billy Goats Gruff'' is set in the heart of a city where an enormous rat tries to keep three goats from crossing the street.Once upon a time, in a big, big city, in a small open lot, lived the Three Cool Kids: Big, Middle, and Little.The Three Cool Kids liked the lot that they lived on. They had been there for as long as any of them could remember.But after many years of grazing, the grass and the weeds were getting sparse, and a great deal of construction was going on next door.

Once a week, Gloria Morton places Alka Seltzer, mothballs and red pepper around her yard. She hopes they'll kill the rats.Her solution, as radical as it might seem, is the best she can do. "Wintertime is coming, and the rats are going to come right into our houses," Morton said.For the next three weeks, Morton and other Baltimore residents who belong to Baltimoreans Against Rats (BAR) plan to take further steps in a different place to combat the city's rat problem. They plan to rally at 6: 30 p.m. today in the 1400 block of Carroll St. in Pigtown.

Joey Amalfitano reports: "Baltimore yet lives, Danny boy! I saw a man sitting on his white marble stoop on Fleet Street in Highlandtown the other day, and he was actually drinking a National Boh. And then a few minutes later, I heard a guy on the No. 10 bus talking about Davey Johnson's strategy in the 'World Serious.' I swear ta gaahd!" . . . Jackie Watts, editor of the East Baltimore Guide, passed along a news release from the Maryland Army National Guard that refers to Oldham Street as "Oldhon" Street.

TIRED OF turkey? Looking for something a little different to serve up this Thanksgiving?How about a 12-pound water rat that culinary experts say tastes somewhat like a beaver, is less greasy than a 'coon but is not quite as good as possum?Hold the green bean casserole, ma, I'm comin' home!America's latest taste treat is called nutria and comes to us courtesy of the good citizens of Louisiana, who, apparently, will eat almost anything.The decision to market nutria as a food source is not due to its wonderful taste (the smell of cooking nutria has been compared to that of Sarin gas)

A flulike illness, transmitted by animal urine and usually regarded as a rural threat, appears to be a common inner-city hazard, according to researchers at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health.Writing in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, the scientists described three severe cases of leptospirosis in Baltimore and found strong evidence that the victims were infected through cuts suffered in rat-infested alleys.A 1992 Baltimore study that revealed that many inner-city residents have developed antibodies from exposure to the bacteria.

Robert Crais is in Pittsburgh when he discovers that his latest book, "Indigo Slam," has entered the Los Angeles Times best seller list at No. 9, the first time he has cracked the top 10 in his hometown. The news makes him charming, convivial, an absolute joy to talk to.In other words, it makes no difference at all.A favorite on the mystery bookstore circuit precisely because of his reliably good spirits, Crais is barnstorming the country in support of his latest book about Los Angeles private detective Elvis Cole.

25 years agoThe Taneytown Council took no action Monday on complaints about "nickel meters." Mayor Powell read off a sample of adverse public comment, most of them from businessmen: "They're destroying the impulse business." Prospective buyers are "driving through and won't stop." It is "driving people out of town." Commenting on these complaints, one city father commented, "People give me a pain where a pill won't reach." The council generally agreed that "this always happens when there's a change."

Baltimore might benefit from a rat census, says a City Council resolution introduced last night by Council President Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake. Three million of the reviled rodents could be burrowing in the city, but nobody knows, in part because no proper count has been done for 50 years, she said. "It never hurts for us to have updated information," she said at yesterday's weekly City Council lunch, held at the Wheelabrator Baltimore waste-to-energy complex near Westport, a plant that receives more than 21,000 tons of garbage daily.

Ronald Cuffie chuckled at the thought of Baltimoreans lining up this weekend to see Ratatouille, the new animated film about a rat in Paris who's an expert chef. Surely some of the city's moviegoers are responsible for the 25,000 service requests made each year to the city's "Rat Rubout" program, which removes the repulsive vermin from infested neighborhoods. "In the movies, rats are likable characters," said Cuffie, director of the city's vector control initiative. "In real life, people want to drop a brick on them."

It was the sighting of heirloom hydrangeas that knocked me into the realization that an old-fashioned Baltimore summer has arrived. Their hot blueberry and purple blossoms, which resemble the shades of snowball flavorings, remind me of canvas awnings and summer hotels. These hydrangeas are tough city survivors. They are tucked into the areaway of some old apartment houses near my home. They seem to thrive on utter inattention and soil conditions only a little removed from a clay pit. I can never recall their not being there; there is something comforting about the annual return of these June veterans.

Suddenly, On May 6, 2006, WILLIAM N. "Rat" MENDENHALL; dearest son of Bill and Marge Barlage and William Mendenhall; beloved brother of Buddy and Mike Barlage, Cathy Neslein, and Lee Greenborn; loving god-father of Tiffany Mc Kee and best friend of Frank Hunt. Also survived by many other nieces, nephews, relatives and friends. Family invite friends to call at the Charles S. Stevens Funeral Home, Inc., 1501 E. Fort Avenue, Locust Point, MD, on Monday 2 to 4 P.M. and 6 to 8 P.M. Funeral Services will be held at the conclusion of the visitation on Monday evening at 8 P.M. Interment will be private.

It has all the elements of a great urban legend: a wayward rodent and terrorized Girl Scouts crossing paths in the august surroundings of the Lowe House Office Building. Add to that the implicit rat/politician jokes. Surely too good to be true. But the tale of the Annapolis House rat actually checks out. So says General Services spokesman Dave Humphrey, who recounts yesterday's 9:30 a.m. incident so well that I'm just gonna let him tell it: "The subject rat was on the second floor of the House of Delegates building.

"He's a rat that belongs in the gutter. I can smell him a mile away. That guy doesn't care about Terrell. He's recruiting next year's players." Keyshawn Johnson On Drew Rosenhaus (above), the agent for Terrell Owens "I'm like Obi-Wan Kenobi in a room of Luke Skywalkers." John Schuerholz Atlanta Braves general manager, 65, on his young colleagues at the GM meetings "It's obvious. Jackson has Owens on his fantasy team." Tom Hoffarth Los Angeles Daily News, on the Rev. Jesse Jackson's defense of Terrell Owens

The warm temperatures this week have revealed yet another unpleasant aspect of jury duty in Baltimore City: The 105-year- old Clarence M. Mitchell Jr. Courthouse smells like dead rats. As if the tedium, uncomfortable chairs, dingy bathrooms and hallways filled with shackled prisoners weren't enough. A strong odor of decaying rodents (or something equally foul) is permeating some of the courtrooms, hallways and jury rooms on the building's second and third floors, prompting one judge to apologize for the, "shall we say, environmental factors" of jury duty.

IF THIS IS Thursday, Philadelphia Eagles receiver Terrell Owens is probably making an ass of himself somewhere. The past couple of days, he's been trying to wriggle out of the controversy he created when he hinted in a soon-to-be published Playboy magazine interview that former teammate and current Cleveland Browns quarterback Jeff Garcia is gay. I'm guessing it will be easier for T.O. (which also is NFL shorthand for timeout, turnover and totally obnoxious)...

After years of frustrating failures, scientists have succeeded in cloning the laboratory rat, Rattus norvegicus. The feat - reported online yesterday in the journal Science - was hailed by scientists as a boon to medical research because the rat is the animal of choice for studying many human diseases, including hypertension, diabetes and heart disease. It also adds new glitz to the rat as a research tool. In labs, the rat has long been eclipsed by its cousin, the mouse, which has been a powerhouse for genetics research for decades and was one of the first mammals to be cloned, in 1998.

Rivals in the sometimes acrimonious race to sequence the human genome are working together to unravel the genomic software powering the rat, an animal often used as a model to help understand disease in people, the National Institutes of Health announced yesterday. Celera Genomics Group, which recently published its human genome sequence in the journal Science, and the Baylor College of Medicine, a key sequencing center for the rival publicly funded project that published in Nature, have been awarded two new grants totaling $58.5 million to help sequence the rat. The awards, $21 million of which will go to Celera over the next two fiscal years, are meant to speed up a publicly funded rat DNA-sequencing project begun at the end of the 1999 fiscal year.