In 2011, my husband and I moved into our first home, a small beach shack atop wooden stilts a few blocks off the beach in South Carolina. The house was a dream aside from the overstuffed marsh rats that scurried across the basement floor morning, noon, and night. When their whiskers twitched, they revealed razor-sharp front teeth, and their furless tails dangled behind them like a wedding train. Memories of those rats still send shivers up my spine.
It doesn’t matter how laid back you are when a mouse or rat scampers across the room; you can’t help but scream. But why? Find out if musophobia is written into our DNA or if it is a learned behavior.
Musophobia is known as an irrational fear of mice and rats. You might fear all rodents or a particular species with which you previously had a scary encounter. A phobia of rodents ...
