The Mautam (I)

The Mautam:
On 2009 February 24, the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) television series NOVA (in cooperation with National Geographic) aired Rat Attack – a documentary featuring the mautam in action.

In the remote corner of eastern India, freshly dug graves in numbers too many to count cover the land. Men roam the forests in search of food. Women dig for roots to fill their family’s bellies. Others walk hundreds of miles in search of rice to feed the stomachs of the starving children. The year is 1959 and the Indian government is confused as it watches thousands of people die from a natural disaster unlike any other – an unfathomable famine. It is caused not by the weather like a storm or tornado, but by small vermin – a plague of rats in the millions. The people call it the mautam and it fills them with dread.

Records from the early years of the British Raj verify an event so mysterious and rare that biologists still are puzzled by the mautam that is described so carefully in Indian myth. Evidence describes these mass rat outbreaks in India in 1959, in 1911, and before that in 1863. This odd proof clearly indicates this weirdly predictable schedule of a rat plague and famine every 48 years.

NOVA was able to capture footage of the most recent mautam beginning in 2006.

It is a warm September night. And in a small northeastern Indian village, the crop is ready. Rice hangs ripe in the stem and tall stalks are bearing plentiful corn. Harvest is scheduled to begin tomorrow and farmers soon fall asleep. However, under the cover of night, a force of nature is underway that will thwart the entire crop in the fields. The villagers have planted enough crops to feed their children and survive another year until the next harvest. But this year…there isn’t going to be a harvest. Within the next three nights, rats in the thousands trample out of the ground. As the farmers sleep in their bamboo huts, the rats overrun the fields and eat everything in sight.

In a small village of 40 families, the farmers in the village of Thlangkang expected a rich harvest of over four thousand pounds of rice. During this year – the mautam has won almost all of this. Farmers were only able to collect a little bit more than 50 pounds of rice. It will be a desperate year – farms all over India are experiencing similar catastrophes. Over a course of days, all the rice in the fields disappears. Now, there is not enough rice to even re-sow for the coming year.

The culprit at hand is not an uncommon foe to the world of plagues: the Black rat (Rattus rattus).
Originating from the tropical regions of Asia, the black rat found its way aboard ships to Europe. It was here where the rat’s fame of carrying diseases was born. R. rattus is well known for carrying numerous pathogens including the bubonic plague. These omnivores are able to consume almost anything; they eat what most humans eat plus more. It can thrive in both the city and the countryside – and take advantage of ultimately any food source.