They were bored.
Mostly rats and mice.
Grim, smelly, overrun with rats, no sanitation, muddy streets, completely foul, and cities and towns were not a lot better.
Redwall
The streets were teeming with rats.
Absolutely not! They lived with rats and often caught horrible diseases which would often spread to be a pandemic, please please visit my page!!
Good question, however, Nimh wasn't a person. Nimh was a scientific research organization. The rats were caught one day when they were roaming and scavenging the streets for food. Because the streets are usually unoccupied on that particular day, the rats were rather careless and unalert. This proved to be a awful mistake, as a bunch of scientist out looking for rats to conduct experiments on in their lab were aware of the amount of rodents in that neighbourhood. The rats were captured by these scientist with traps and nets. They were escorted to NIMH, where they were experimented on. actuly they werent roaming the streets they were in a farmers trading store type place ;)
People mostly thought that. It was punishment from god and it was end of the world.
The black death was thought to be caused by black rats, carrying fleas. But other strange reasons: Gods Wrath, warlocks curse, etc.
They are sea rats from the old English times.
Rats are not filthy creatures. They groom themselves for hours every day. But what about bubonic plague? The rats did not cause this - it was the fleas on them that did the trick. And their reputation of being filthy? It's our fault. We carelessly drop rubbish on streets, and the rats scavenge around for them.
It is a common Misconception that rats started the plague but this is only partly true. The rats were attracted into the cities because of the rubbish and alsorts on the streets and with those rats came bacteria, these bacteria lived on the rats and soon the rats passed these bacteria onto humans and so the plague was started.
Black plague cholera small pox typhus bad water bad food wars rats, mice, and lice STD's medical help/hospitalization infections