Look before you sit: A follow up

Ok, after this morning's run and the accompanying discussion, I wanted to give an update. Plus, I'm sitting here having my heart broken by the Minnesota Twins (I knew they were going to loose the series, but I was hoping for a win at home first) and I have the biggest blister ever in life on my foot (It's ok, I think I just need to re-lace my shoes, plus I have Heather's awesome body glide plan.) so I needed something to cheer me up.

I got curious about this whole "rat swimming up into the toilet" thing because I'd never heard anything like it. A quick google search took me straightdope.com. That article really posed more questions than it answered. Most importantly: What do you do when you find a rat in your toilet?

So I headed over to asktheexterminator.com, a site which should only be referenced for horror movies. Why? Who wants to know this:

[FTA:]Rats are good underwater swimmers. (They can swim one-half mile in open water and can tread water for up to three days.) It's totally possible for a rat to walk up a horizontal soil pipe from the sewer, swim through the water-filled piping inside the toilet, and surface in the toilet bowl.

Three days?

I also learned this has been a phenomena in places outside Minnesota like Arizona and my home state of Ohio (poopreport.com, hee hee). So apparently I was wrong about thinking this rat issue was regional. (Black widows are still scarier.)

The Twins still haven't finished breaking my heart yet (bottom of the 9th, now 4-1 Yankees, 1 out), oooh hey, why is that person running across the field? And why are they showing replays instead of showing me what's happening? It's not like he's naked.

To stave off the heart break, if only for a moment, I'll just add:
Bonus WIN to straightdope.com for taking a dipsh!t caver spelunker (no way was that guy a caver) to task on accurately portraying the likelihood of getting rabies from bats and for telling me about Merlin Tuttle's new job. I thought he was still in Texas. FTA:

As for bats--well, let me tell you, buddy, they don't take kindly to being libeled by disreputable rat lovers such as yourself. Bat biologist Edward Stashko of Oakton College, Des Plaines, Illinois, estimates that less than one-half of 1 percent of bats are rabid. He says many common misconceptions about bats, such as that they can carry rabies and infect humans without themselves being affected by the disease, grew out of faulty scientific research from the 30s, no doubt conducted at the behest of the rat lobby.

According to a 1982 report in National Wildlife, only ten people in the U.S. and Canada have contracted rabies from bats in more than 30 years. Exclaims Dr. Stashko: "More people have died from lawn mowers than from bats. Statistically you have a better chance of being hit by lightning than being bitten by a rabid bat."