A Chinese legend points to the rat as the first animal to appear when Buddha summoned all the animals of the world to come before him. Ever the opportunist, the Rat came before the Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog and, finally, the Boar. This makes the Rat the leader of the astrological pack, the first symbol in the Chinese Zodiac, the alpha animal that launches a new cycle and a new beginning every 12 years. Are you surprised? I’m not.We may think of the rat as a revolting, disgusting, unlovable and greedy rodent, but as an emblem of survival—admit it—we all secretly and grudgingly respect it.

Despite the revulsion triggered by the mere thought of these beasties, if you were born in the Year of the Rat, which began with Chinese New Year on Feb. 7, you are in good company. Marlon Brando was a Rat, and so is Cameron Diaz. Literature and the arts are peppered with Rats: William Shakespeare, Leo Tolstoy, Sean Penn, Lauren Bacall, Louis Armstrong, Spencer Tracy, T.S. Eliot, Gene Kelly and Lawrence of Arabia, to name a few. Prince Harry is a Rat, and Clark Gable was one, and, although he might not give a damn, so is Scarlett— Johansson, that is.

This information came from Neil Somerville’s popular tome, Your Chinese Horoscope 2008. If you’re embarrassed by your Rat affiliation—and which Rat isn’t?—the book brings a measure of relief and legitimacy. It explains that those born in the Year of the Rat are often charming, diligent, observant, resourceful and gregarious. But they can also be frugal and mean, and they can be hoarders, as in Pack Rats. Depending upon which Rat year you were born in, you are either a Metal Rat, Water Rat, Wood Rat, Fire Rat or Earth Rat (in Hawai‘i we also have the Surf Rat), and each element has its own finer distinctions and horoscopes.

Regardless, fellow Rats, this is our year. Rat years find entrepreneurs licking their chops as they cook up endless innovations— better mousetraps, if you will—to catapult us beyond the status quo. If it hadn’t been for the lowly Rat, we might still be using floppy disks, because the CD-ROMwas introduced in a Rat year, and so was the Apple Macintosh. Web TV also came in a Rat year, and so did genetic fingerprinting. This Rat year even had a showy international preview: the announcement, in mid-January, that a giant fossil found 21 years ago in Uruguay was thought to be that of a one-ton rat, as big as a bull or hippopotamus—EEK!—with a skull larger than 20 inches and teeth that suggested a diet of aquatic plants. News reports described the beast, named Josephoartigasia monesi, as something of a cross between a guinea pig and a hippopotamus.

In Hawai‘i, the queasiness factor is augmented by the fact that rodents pose a threat to our delicate species of wildlife, such as the ‘ua‘u kani, the wedge-shaped shearwater, and other ground-nesting birds whose eggs and fledglings are vulnerable. The weasel-like mongoose is as much a threat to birds as the common rat. Seventy-two mongooses were introduced to Hawai‘i in 1883 to control rats that were attacking the sugar cane. All too late, because as rats are a nocturnal species and mongooses are active in daylight, it was discovered that their paths never crossed, and rats proliferated. The strategy was found to be useless.

Besides, as it was in Buddha’s garden, the rat was here first. Along with the pig and the dog, the rat arrived with early Polynesian settlers from the Central Pacific islands and made itself at home in paradise. As Rattus exulans hawaiiensis, it enjoys a peculiar status in Hawai‘i as an endemic mammal that gets to star in the Chinese zodiac every 12 years. Oh, rats!