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Look at that dude right there. Pretty cute dude. Just a little gerbil. D’awww, you might even say.
That’s one way your could refer to him. But I’m here to tell you that, fuck that, for from now on you need to refer to gerbils by their real names: HARBINGERS OF DEATH.
You might think it’s rats that are the carrier of communicable diseases. Filthy rats. Nah, rats are chill. They’ve just gotten a bad rap. For, you see, everyone thought it was rats who caused the bubonic plague, the greatest outbreak of disease in human history.
The Black Death killed somewhere between 75-100 million people in the 1300s, which at the time was nearly half the living world. It would be like if a pandemic killed two billion people next week. Just look at this puppy go.
“Blackdeath2” Andrei nacu at en.wikipedia.
And everybody and their mothers and all the dead people who have no living descendants because this thing wiped everyone the fuck out blamed it on rats.
Damn the rats, they said. Damn them to heck. But you, me, we, we’d all be wrong in damning the rats. From The Washington Post.
After nearly eight centuries of accusing the black rat for spreading the bubonic plague, scientists say they have compelling evidence to exonerate the much-maligned rodent.
According to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, climate data dating back to the 14th century contradicts the commonly held notion that European plague outbreaks were caused by a reservoir of disease-carrying fleas hosted by the continent’s rat population.
It wasn’t the rats, though. IT WAS THE GERBILS.
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That’s better. That gerbil can go fuck himself. You see, it was too wet for the rats. It was always too wet for rats.
Instead, the fearsome “Black Death,” as the epidemic was known, seemed curiously tied to the climate in Asia. Analysis of 15 tree-ring records, which document yearly weather conditions, shows that Europe always experienced plague outbreaks after central Asia had a wet spring followed by a warm summer — terrible conditions for black rats, but ideal for Asia’s gerbil population. Those sneaky rodents and their bacteria-ridden fleas then hitched a ride to Europe via the Silk Road, arriving on the continent a few years later to wreak epidemiological havoc.
[This] also explain why the disease popped up intermittently century after century, rather than lingering on the continent as long as rats were around to carry it.
Seriously, dude. Fuck you. Carrying the deadliest pathogen known to man on your back just because you wanted to traipse around Europe is the definition of no chill.
Rats. We are sorry. But at least you aren’t getting stuck up people’s asses for pleasure.
I guess you could say gerbils got what they deserve.