Even if you haven’t laid eyes on any rats in the city, trust me, they are there. I’ve seen them bolting through the tunnels of the Sewer Museum (my first and last time there), traipsing along the periphery of playgrounds just feet away from my children and even performing tricks at Paris’ Cirque d’Hiver Bouglione. Part of the circus act included GIANT rats, which they called “les plus gros rats du monde.”

I was getting a little nervous about running into one of those one night until I looked them up and discovered they are actually coypus from South America. You’ll only see them at the circus. The rats running around our city and comparatively small and harmless.

Why Parisians happily coexist with the polarizing rodents

A performer at the circus threw a pretend rat into the audience and a whole section of people basically lost their minds. Drinks were spilled, popcorn was flung, screams were heard. Anyone who has had rats for pets (like me) knows that rats are intelligent, social and affectionate animals. Also, in terms of personal hygiene, they are very clean animals. In fact, they are less likely than cats or dogs to contract and transmit viruses and parasites.

Parisian exterminators have a love affair with taxidermy

Let’s take a minute to talk about the exterminators. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen people take such pride in their work. Not only do they exterminate the rats, they stuff them and put them on display in their store windows.

I’ve seen it all: taxidermied rats boxing, superhero rats (Clark Kent opening his shirt to reveal a Superman S, a bright green Hulk rat with frayed shorts), a punk rat, a Rastafarian rat and bien sûr, a chef rat.

Perhaps the most shocking window display is found at a shop called Aurouze on Rue des Halles in the 1st. They’ve got your typical standing stuffed rats, but they also feature desiccated rats next to wooden rat traps and poison pellets, and above that, two rows of taxidermied rats hanging by their necks from antique traps.

A friend and I stopped here as we ride around the city with Bike About Tours. We learned that these rats were captured in 1925 in nearby Les Halles, which used to be a huge food market. The Aurouze family, who founded the shop in 1872, must know some talented taxidermists because those rats don’t look a day over 2. (That’s the average lifespan of a rat, by the way.)

If you’re anything like me, these window displays will stop you in your tracks and have you scratching your head for a long time. The whole rat scenario in Paris has me wondering: should we be aggressively exterminating these rodents or is there a way to coexist? Could we force them underground where they would be out of sight, out of mind?

According to Gilles Demodice, a manager in Paris’ Animal Pest Control Department, “Rats play a very useful role for us because what they eat we do not need to dispose of, so it’s very economical for us, and when rats are underground they also clean the pipes with their fur when they run through them….So we need to keep them. They’re sort of our friends, but they need to stay below. That’s all we ask: that they stay below.”