INVADED BY RATS.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18187, 25 September 1924, Page 5

INVADED BY RATS.

<►— The latest problem to trouble the Wellington City Corporation is the iuvasion by rats of the city organ at the Town Hall, due. it is believed in some quarters., to the large quantities of foodstuffs which are left over after social functions in the hall (says the "Dominion." Frequently accumulations of refuse from such functions aro left in the back yard for some time after the event. A great deal of leather and animal skin is used in connexion with the stops over tho air holes. These flaps, which movo upward under air pressure, and fall immediately tho pressure is cased, aro made out of very special picked leather, which, is. no doubt, rather toothsome to tho rodents. who have instituted a campaign against municipal music. Tho city organist (Mr Bernard F. Page) states that a good deal of damage has already been done to the leathers of the pipes, and if it is allowed to continue will interfere with the functioning of some of them. The custodian has already set a couple of traps among the pipes,*:uul on Sunday evening when the organist was playing Mendelssohn's "Spring Song" the frightened squeals of a trapped rat could bo distinctly heard.