Well no, if you love the Wind in The Willows, Ratty the water rat was actually a water vole.  These are pretty hard to find now in the UK but you can see a picture of one here.  But the rat featured here is a true rat.  The brown rat or Rattus Norvegicus (if you remember the great album by The Stranglers).  

I know most people, myself included, have a bit of a visceral reaction to seeing a rat.  However, spotting this one yesterday in the water made me realise how very well adapted it is and how at home it is in the water.  Like most rodents, they are really quite elegant and lithe creatures.  This one quickly swam across the canal and up onto this old submerged branch before moving off into the bankside undergrowth.  

Of course, one of the issues with having rats in our local waterways (and that really means every slow moving body of water in the UK) is that rat urine can carry Leptospirosis or Weil’s Disease.  This is a rather unpleasant bacterial infection that you should be aware of if you swim in or take part in activities near fresh water.  In reality, the risk is pretty low in the UK (typically around just 50 cases per year) but the rat’s propensity to harbour or spread disease in probably the main reason that most of us dislike them.