What’s the neatest creature on the waterfront? Why a wharf rat of course! People give rats a bad reputation. Rats live wherever people live, and without knowing it, we interact with them almost every day. Your mission is to become a rat, outwit those humans and survive! Rats mostly come out at night but you’re an adventurous and hungry rat. To start:

1. Put on your rat costume.
2. Come up with a rat sound to warn other rats of danger.
3. Give your warning sound if you see a human wearing red, then hide.

To survive you need to be on the lookout for three things:

• Danger – what could harm a rat on the Halifax waterfront?
• Food – what does a rat eat and where can you get it?
• Shelter – where can you go to sleep or to escape from danger?

Wharf rats, also called Norway rats, sewer rats, brown rats or water rats, came to North America on ships with the first wave of European settlers in the late 1700s. The rats came over in the ships’ holds among the food supplies. Today there are likely as many rats as there are people in the world. People see them as pests because they eat food supplies, destroy buildings and carry diseases. Don’t chase or corner a rat as they can be very vicious when frightened.

Find as many small holes as you can where a rat could find shelter. Stay near the balcony and watch for safety near the water.

How many holes did you find? Which one would you pick? Do the rat scamper to move between stops:

1. Crouch down low. Use small steps and move quickly.
2. Stop every now and then to look around.

At the turn in the boardwalk, carefully scan the water line under the wharf for your seafood snack. Make a menu listing the things you see that a rat might eat:

Chez Rat Menu

Hungry again? Yup. As a rat, you can eat a third of your body weight in 24 hours. Peek through the white fence. Garbage is stored here and it’s a great place for a meal. Even though most restaurants compost their food waste, some usually ends up in the garbage. Yum, yum!

Most rats can fit through openings about as big as the width of a finger. As a rat, can you fit under the fence to get at the garbage?

Turn down the passage to the courtyard that stretches from the street to the boardwalk.

There are many sources of food around here. Count the number of garbage cans along the courtyard from the street to the boardwalk. How many are there? Is there food in any of them? Be careful, there are rat traps along the courtyard– do you see them? They are small boxes that blend in along the bottom of the buildings that people do not usually notice.

Do you think the metal cage or the concrete garbage cans are easier for a rat to get into?

Where would you hide to escape from danger? Look down for an easy escape route – near the middle of the courtyard. The sewer grate heads into the rat highway of the Halifax Underworld.

You are still hungry! Good thing that a lot of humans come down to the waterfront to eat their lunches. It takes skill to steal a human’s lunch. Try it:

1. Gather near the grate. One person is the human and everyone else is a rat.
2. The human sits in the centre of a circle of rats that are about three giant steps away.
3. Spread the crumpled paper around and near the human. The human puts on the vision blocker.
4. Everyone is silent while one at a time, a rat tries to sneak up and steal a ball of paper.
5. If the human hears the rat before the rat sits back down, the human points in that direction.
6. The rat becomes the human if it is caught.

Rats must have good balance. Test your skills. As you walk to the next stop, try only stepping on the heads of nails hammered into the wooden boardwalk. Can you do it?

Look out on the ferry dock. This is a popular hangout for pigeons and seagulls that compete with rats for food. Count the number of pigeons and seagulls that you see.

Boats are good sources of food for rats. In fact, that is how rats came to North America. Use your scope to look at all the different ships in the harbour. Find the ship you would want to live on if you were a rat. Draw it in your Adventure Journal if you want.

Continue around the back of the ferry terminal through the passageway. Look for a weathervane on top of the naval clock. Figure out which way the wind is blowing so you know where the food smells are coming from. Rats have a very good sense of smell.

Is the Acadia a good ship for a home? Ships sometimes have cats on board to hunt down rats. If it is open, go on board and ask the tour guides if they have a cat. If they do, find out its name. (It costs $2 to get on the Acadia.) Ask if they think the Acadia would make a good home for a rat. Why or why not?

Walk to the play gym in the shape of a submarine located next to the Maritime Museum. Where would a rat hide on this ship? Sneak about and find the three best hiding places.

Face the harbour with your back to the statue and check out the wharf in front of you. This is a rat’s racetrack. Test your speed on it.

1. Stand at the beginning of the wharf, where the concrete meets the wood.
2. On “go”, race to the end of the wharf, touch the wooden rim of the wharf and race back.
3. Touch every wooden post on the way.
4. Make sure you don’t run into someone.

You might be fast, but are you agile and clever moving through a small space? Often rats play games when they are all on the wharf at night and no one is around just to practice their skills. Try this game.

1. Form partners where one person is a mother or father rat and the other one is a kid rat.
2. Set boundaries which are the width of the wharf and about the same distance of length on the wharf (a small square).
3. The parent rat must catch the kid rat by tagging them, but both of them can only move with small rat steps. This means you must shuffle along the wharf (no running).
4. To start, the parent rat spins three times while the kid rat tries to get away.
5. Once the kid rat gets tagged, the kid rat spins three times, turns into the parent rat and chases the new kid rat.
6. Hint: if you have more than one pair of rats, use each other as barriers.

On your way to the pilot boats, look along the edge of the water for some little water plants. How did they get there? Could they be food for a rat?

It is rumoured that mink (a creature similar to a weasel) live around the pilot boat wharf. They come out at night and eat rats if they can catch them. A pilot boat is a good hiding place from a mink. How would a rat get on one? One way is to walk along the thick ropes. In fact, rats have been known to tightrope walk across power lines! Figure out how far it is to run on the rope from the wharf to the tugboat:

1. Stand on the boardwalk looking out at the pilot boat.
2. Guess the distance in baby steps (one foot directly after the other) along the length of the rope from the wharf to the boat.

See if you could make it along the rope by jumping. Measure how far you can jump on the boardwalk:

1. Mark your starting point and then guess how far it is along the boardwalk to match the length of the rope.
2. From the standing position, jump as many times as you need to reach the end of the rope’s distance as you have guessed it.
3. How many jumps did it take you? How far do you think it is? Could you make it?

You are now tired after all of the running and jumping and you need a safe spot to hole up and rest where people or dogs will not bother you. Search around this area and find the coolest hole you could sneak in for a rest. Take a picture of it and upload it to the website.

Now see if you can find the plaque in the area with the mystery creature on it. Make a rubbing of it with the side of your pencil in your Adventure Journal!

(Hint: it is in the centre of the picture above, not too far away, but you cannot see it in the photo).

The plaque symbol is:

Add ideas or a box for where rats live.

Congratulations, you have survived as a rat on the Halifax Waterfront! Take a well-deserved rest!