It's Not A Rat, It's A Muskrat

When a Red Deer radio station disk jockey reported seeing a rat last week, all heck broke loose.  The Beautiful Province of Alberta, you see, does not  HAVE rats.  At least, not officially.   In fact, for 54 years, there has been a dedicated Rat Patrol along 390 kilometers (29 kilometers wide) of the Alberta-Saskatchewan border making sure Saskatchewan rats stay in Saskatchewan.. 
"Muskrat", was the official diagnosis  by Vaugn Christensen, Alberta Agriculture's manager of inspection services.
"I'll bet what he saw was a juvenile muskrat, which looks a lot like the Norway rat," said Christensen.  "I'd say about 95 per cent of the calls we get are people confusing muskrats with rats."

Yeah right.