This is the John Fugel-Sang Podcast.

Welcome back to Serious XM. I am John Fugel-X-M. I am John Fugel-Sang. Alaska Public Media was reporting this week of a possible

rat sighting at the remote island of St Paul. Now this is a community of about 300 people on the island.

They have worked for decades to be rodent free, and officials at the island's tribal government

have said there was a sighting on a camera of a single rat

and this could devastate local seabirds

and permanently change the wildlife populations.

A couple of years ago, in 2018,

they spent almost a year local and federal officials on the island trying to eradicate

a rogue rat that they think snuck in on a boat.

We wish the good folks of St. Paul Island the best of luck in this because our next guest has written one of the most entertaining

books of the year about how inevitable human and rat coexistence has turned out to be.

Joe Shoot is an author and a journalist with a passion for the natural world.

He writes for the Daily Telegraph. He is the newspaper's long-standing

Weather Watch columnist. He has written many books including Forecast, a diary of the lost seasons and a shadow

above the fallen rise of the raven but nothing will prepare you for a history book

that is guaranteed fascinating a book I am telling you right now you will discuss for

years with your friends of all political persuasions the book is stowaway where

Mr. Shoot explores our complex relationship,

Piamosapians, with the rat.

He travels the world from sub-Saharan Africa

to the Rocky Mountains, visits some of the most rodent infested cities

...