The Colony of Skittering Rats is a gargantuan, efficient nation, ruled by Big Cheese with an iron fist, and renowned for its free-roaming dinosaurs, infamous sell-swords, and suspicion of poets. The hard-nosed, cynical, humorless, devout population of 11.217 billion Rats are kept under strict control by the oppressive government, which measures its success by the nation's GDP and refers to individual citizens as "human resources."

The large, corrupt, well-organized government prioritizes Administration, although Industry, Healthcare, and Defense are also considered important, while International Aid and Welfare are ignored. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Mouse Hole. The average income tax rate is 94.9%.

The frighteningly efficient Ratsian economy, worth a remarkable 3,160 trillion cheeses a year, is quite specialized and mostly comprised of black market activity, especially in Uranium Mining, Retail, Information Technology, and Woodchip Exports. Average income is an amazing 281,763 cheeses, and evenly distributed, with the richest citizens earning only 4.0 times as much as the poorest.

The government is seen to favor traditionalist religions, frat-house partying has become the national pastime, bands of paramedics walk the streets looking for suspicious medical activity, and both diets and economic output are growing leaner with recent restrictions to free trade. Crime is all-pervasive, perhaps because of the country's complete lack of prisons. Skittering Rats's national animal is the roach, which teeters on the brink of extinction due to widespread deforestation.

Skittering Rats is ranked 569^th in the world and 1^st in The Sewers on the Corner of Every Region for Most Subsidized Industry, scoring 21,757.83 on the Gilded Widget Scale.