As Taipei grapples with a rat infestation, Pinuyumayan communities in Taitung, known for hunting field rats for food and ceremonies, said Taipei City could hire them to catch the rodents.
Pinuyumayan communities can catch many rats, so they could help Taipei resolve its rat crisis, but the city would have to pay for the service, and should cover their food and lodging, Taitung County Councilor and indigenous community member Cheng Kang-shan (鄭崗山) said on Saturday.
Toward the end of each year, many Pinuyumayan communities organize hunting teams that travel as far as Hualien to hunt field rats. They also set traps to catch field rats during the Lunar New Year, often returning home with full trucks.
Photo: Liu Jen-wei, Taipei Times
The Pinuyumayan people use field rats for ceremonies and as food, and consider the animal’s meat a delicacy.
Members of the Pinuyumayan community said that although field rats are different from the rats commonly found in cities, especially as the latter are inedible, they are capable of catching the rats all the same.
When Pinuyumayan people see a rat, they first decide if it is edible and then figure out how to catch it, but they are never afraid, community members said.
Cheng said they usually observe animal trails in the fields to determine where the rats are active, use rice as bait and set traps.
Even with other food scraps around, they know how to entice the rats without making them suspicious, he said.
A Pinuyumayan surnamed Lu (陸) from the Puyuma village said that if a rat is seen around Pinuyumayan communities, it is because they are inedible.
Rats found around graveyards, garbage piles or residential areas, as well as field rats in dirty places, are not eaten, Lu said.
The Pinuyumayan people have been hunting rats for the past 100 to 200 years, a tradition that began out of hardship and necessity, he said.
During the Japanese colonial period, indigenous people were restricted from carrying knives, swords and guns, which were their everyday survival tools, so communities were forced to change their customs and habits, Lu said.
“Hunting large animals requires guns, otherwise it is too dangerous. However, there are rituals that cannot be held without meat, so we had to switch to smaller animals like field rats,” he said.
In Pinuyumayan hunting traditions today, piles of field rats are placed on altars as offerings and presented to their ancestors before the rats are cooked and shared, Lu said.
Rats are small and they have little meat, so the community relies on quantity, he added.
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