In Defense of the Rat

Summary

Article body copy Congratulations to J. B. MacKinnon for winning a Society of Environmental Journalists award for this article. There was a time when we human beings used to put animals on trial for their alleged crimes against us. The earliest of these prosecutions in the Western tradition of law appears to be a case against moles in the Valle d’Aosta, Italy, in 824 AD, and legal actions continued into the 1900s. In the centuries between, a killer pig was dressed in human clothing and hanged in Falaise, France; Marseille put dolphins on trial for crimes unknown; and a rooster—in what must have been a case of mistaken identity—was burned at the stake in Basel, Switzerland, for the witchery of laying an egg while male. The classic investigation of this subject, E. P. Evans’s 1906 book The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals, finds no evidence that these trials were carried out for comedic effect, or in fact that the litigation was anything but gravely serious. That said, things obviously did get weird. In 1522, “some rats of the diocese” of Autun, France, were charged with criminally eating and destroying barley crops. A skilled legal tactician, one Barthélemy de Chasseneuz, was assigned to defend the rats. The case is remembered for its procedural twists and turns. When his clients—guess what?—didn’t show up for their day in court, de Chasseneuz noted that the summons had mentioned only “some rats.” But which ones, specifically? The court ordered that a new summons be addressed to all the rats of Autun. When the rodents still failed to appear, their nimble lawyer had a second defense at the ready. His clients, he said, were widely dispersed, and for them the trip to court amounted to a great journey. The rats needed more time. Again proceedings were rescheduled, and again the rats missed their date with the law. Of course they did, said de Chasseneuz. To arrive at court, the rats faced the twin perils of vindictive villagers and their bloodthirsty...