GERMANY: Sales of rats up 20 percent in some German pet stores after success of Disney's "Ratatouille" movie

Sales of rats have gone up in Germany since the start of Disney's movie success "Ratatouille." Since the launch of Disney's successful "Ratatouille" movie, the sale of rats at one of Germany's main pet shop chains has gone up considerably, the manager of one branch told Reuters Television in Duesseldorf on Friday (November 2). "I had a look at the figures and since the movie's premiere, there was a 20 to 25 percent increase in the number of rats sold -- and this despite our warnings that the animals live for 2 to 3 years and get considerably bigger than the cute little thing on my shoulder right now," Jan Manninger said. The film about a rat named Remy which dreams about becoming a great chef cook only recently started showing at German cinemas. Rat salesman Jan Manninger was straight forward about "risks involved: wild rats are relatively aggressive animals." "There is a reason why they survive everything. When you have a mother rat you have to accept being bitten from time to time. That's just how it is." "And you know how children are: once they're bitten they don't find the animal cute at all anymore. They will also discover that rats are not gourmet cooks and not gourmet eaters and that they don't have a gourmet smell either," Manninger said. In Berlin meanwhile, Christine Brandt of the German Association of Rats and Rat Lovers predicted that "in a month or two, we will notice from our emergency lists that people bought a rat out of ardour and only later realised that the animal had to go again because it just didn't fit into their schedule." Asked what's so great about keeping a rat, Brandt praised the animals' "smartness" and claimed that "you can perform certain exercises with them just like with dogs." "Rats live in packs. When I join my rats in the rat room they come to me and they ask me to play with them."

ITN Source | November 5, 2007

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