‘As is the habit in academia, it took researchers a great deal of time and money to come to understand what any novice in the field would recognize about Able Forest in Arkansas: it is a statuary for rats. The pieces in ‘The Rat Statuary’ look like rats. They look so much like rats that, prior to the area’s viral popularity, most people were under the impression that it was a place where rats came to die, their bodies stiffening on the ground and drying into mummies for lack of regular precipitation. But, no. The statues are made of twigs and barks and leaves and, yes, sometimes the fur and skin of the dead but never enough to make them bodies, per se. Just effigies.
So, the academic question was never whether or not the statues looked like rats. And it took very little time and a few hunting cameras to confirm that the rats were, indeed, responsible for these creations, so the question was never who was responsible. No, the question that plagued researchers was why?’
Why indeed?
The floor of Able Forest is a mine field of these little rat statues, each one nearly exactly the same in size and pose, differentiated only in execution, really, and in weather-wear. The rats are posed on all fours, each with its head turned up and to the right as though they were made skittish by some sound above them. The effect is uncanny when a predatory bird flies over or when I position myself just right to be the cause of their concern. From that vantage point I can see the little beetle shells or river rocks the artists have installed in the eyes of their creations, mimicking the glossy wetness of a rat’s glance.
I’m not alone in ‘The Rat Statuary’ today. It’s a popular place, relative to other Wayside destinations, but there isn’t much appeal beyond the first few statues and the families have to drag their eldest children through the latter half of the displays, reiterating that not all journeys have social media potential and arguing that a ‘bad vibe’ isn’t reason enough to sit out an opportunity to learn.
For once, I’m with the teens.
‘The Rat Statuary’ has the bad vibe of art made obsessively or as a ward against some intimate evil. Why should these rats feel the need to reproduce this fearful posture again and again? Is it a tribute? A warning? I’ve seen the videos of the rats building and they do not strike me as happy. They do not look like they are at ease.
Some art grants its audience the sadness of its creator and it draws from an infinite supply. It frightens me to think that art could be a vessel- a means by which sickness can be transmitted. These rats seem sick and these statues are the symptom of what ails them.
I decline the dead-eyed plushies at the gift shop, their heads all swerved to the right. I worry about my own art and what it has done to the people who have witnessed it.
– traveler
