On the trail of those dirty rats

A man in a black Brooks Brothers suit walks the alleys of downtown Beverly Hills. It's after 9 and things are pretty much shut down, the clothing stores, the smoothie parlors. The man could be on his way to or from a fancy dinner -- with his floral print shirt and matching tie, with his natty square cuff links. He could be scouting movie locations or walking off an unsuccessful date. That might explain why occasionally he kicks a dumpster.

But it doesn't.

"This is great," he says, peering down a tributary alley behind a restaurant. "Oh yeah, this is great." His gaze traces the roofline, taking in the power lines, the maze of pipes that lattice the brick wall, his smile broadening at the sight of the open dumpsters. "Smell that?" he says, breathing in the rotting garbage, the rusty stagnant water. "Yeah," he says again, "this could be our place. Only," he says, suddenly disappointed, "no palm trees."

Robert Sullivan is looking for rats. Specifically, the black rat or roof rat. Even more specifically, the Beverly Hills palm-tree-dwelling roof rat. Sullivan has just written and published a book called "Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants." The book is doing very well, considering the high repulsion factor of its subject. Sullivan, who has a talent for presenting a lot of information in a very engaging manner, has gotten very good reviews and a fair amount of airplay, including here in Los Angeles. But the book is set in New York, and so are the rats. Sullivan has never seen an L.A. rat and he really, really wants to.

Los Angeles rats are very different from New York rats. New York rats are the fat, mean and ugly brown rat, or Norwegian rat. Los Angeles has some Norwegian rats who came West via the railroad and can be found mostly downtown, but the dominant species here is the black rat, sometimes called the ship rat because it arrived, along with many other unpleasant things, when Europeans discovered the coastline.

Black rats are sleek and graceful; they like to live in high places like attics and trees, to do a little traveling, though more often alone than in teeming ratty hordes. Black rats tend to have a healthy diet, eating fruits and vegetables whenever they can, which, given the state of L.A. backyards, is often. Their tails are quite long and slender.