Andrew Sze Wai-chun reckons he caught a kindred spirit red-handed - or pink-pawed - in his kitchen the other night. The 35-year-old teacher switched on the light, and there was a rat, as big as a cat, on his countertop.
Some Hong Kong folk might have been startled by the visitor's whiskers, beady eyes and its cheek in trying to unscrew the lid of a peanut butter jar. But not Sze. Born in the Year of the Rat, he knows rodents have creativity, ambition, generosity and the ability to get along well with others.
'We looked at each other for a moment,' Sze recalls. 'I thought, 'Well, he's a rat. I'm a Rat. He likes peanut butter. I like peanut butter. I'll leave him until morning'.'
Sze's midnight pal may have concluded from his experience that it's safer in a Hong Kong kitchen than out on the streets. And he may well be right.
Rodent experts don't know how many rats and mice there are in Hong Kong, but the government's out to get them. The start of the Year of the Rat also marks a tailing off of the first phase of the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department's Anti-Rodent Campaign 2008 in 79 markets before it gets going again in July.
The initiative includes public notices displayed by market stalls, posters tacked up in problem areas such as Kwun Tong and Western, and a contest asking participants to find all the things on a cartoon drawing of a fruit stand that a rat could exploit.