INCENDIARY RATS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 194, 18 August 1942, Page 6

INCENDIARY RATS

mystery explained

ELECTRIC MOTOR JAMMED

Popular prejudice against rats is. well founded. Their disease-spread-ing propensities seem to be fail 1* well established, while the energv with which they habituallv gnaw holes in the community's most prized possessions—sometimes. 1 left unmolested for a sufficient length of time, even threatening the verv foundations of larpe structures —has rightly earned for tfiem a reputation as the most unregenerate vandals of the animal uncleiworld. Generally this unloved rodent seems thoroughly to ha\ c justified its world-wide selection aa symbol of everything that is regarded as despicable, so that tne term, when applied to any apparently similar human activities. ha* come to be accepted as the ultimate expression of condemnation. Like its hypothetical underground human contemporary the anti-social rat has recently been found to be keeping abreast of the times in marking full use of mechanical and scientific progress for its persistent policy of destruction, and herein has lately been discovered the solution to otherwise mysterious outbreaks of fire in certain improbable places. Outbreaks of fire originating m the refrigeration plants of such premises as butchers' shops, for example. had for some time baffled the expert investigators; but the mystery now has been cleared up wntn the" discovery of fragments of an incinerated rat and its nest inside the housing of an electric motor used as the power plant for an automatic refrigerator. It was apparent that the rat. attracted by the warmth, had chosen this as a suitable residence soon after the motor had automatically cut off. When the motor later automatically sought to resume its job, the rat and whatever rubbish it so far had dragged in as the foundations of a nest, caused the motor to jam with the result that the temperature of the motor windings would rise to the point of ignition. It was recently discovered that a fire in a butcher's shop in the South Island had been caused in this manner, and several similar cases have been reported, the type concerned being usually a A or \ h.p. single-phase 230-voit motor on which the ventilator opening through the housing on the commutator end is sufficiently large to enable the rats to enter.

Now that the cause of this type of outbreak has been discovered, it is pointed out that it can very simply be guarded against by covering the opening on the motor with a piece of iin mesh wire netting.