RATS

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 11, 13 July 1931, Page 10

RATS

A MODEEN SCOURGE

KEEPING THE CITY CLEAN

There may bo some tender-hearted people who profess to admire a mouse and call it a dear little creature, whilst at the same time admitting the necessity of setting a trap tp end its depredations in the pantry cupboard. But rats! No one has a good word or an admiring glance for these evil animals. Where it is a case of hysteria amongst the ladies with regard'to a mouse, it is fainting if a rat puts'in an appearance. But in a seaport like Wellington rats, like the poor, are always with us. During the daytime when tho city is teeming with activity, they arc seldom seen; but at night, when the stroots, and more especially the wharves and warehouses, are deserted, the rats become active after their daytime retirement. These resourceful and quickly-breed-ing rodents are destructive out of all proportion to their size. They are, perhaps, the greatest pest of modern times, for, in addition to doing almost un-J believable damage, they are a distinct menace to health, being carriers of the dreaded plague germ. It has been estimated that they do quite one million pounds worth of damage to goods and property each year in New Zealand, which is about the amount of damage they are estimated to do each week in England. But to assess the damage in anything but round figures is impossible. It is far greater than the majority of people realise. ' "Eats! They fought the dogs and killed the cats, and bit the babies in the cradles, and made their nests in men's Sunday hats," sang Hobert Browning in his story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. But the rats in Wellington are not as bad as they were in Hamelin, although they are bad enough. Warehouses and wharf sheds arc happy hunting grounds for them. Their taste in food is all-embracing, and if sanitary precautions stop their access to rubbish and refuse, their food supply is supplemented from what they can find in the warehouses. What they eat is amazing, and what they can gnaw through is more amazing still. Cast iron is rather more than their sharp teeth can manage, but they have been known to get through concrete. They even invade tho sacred precincts of the Town Hall where City Fathers deliberate, but a certain small dog that has tho run of the corridors there at night makes the Town Hall an undesirable placo in which to reside, that is, from the rats' point of view. KEEPING THEM IN CHECK. • It should not bo imagined that Wellington is unduly rat-ridden, or ha^ more, rats than other cities. It has rats certainly like other cities, but adequate steps are taken to prevent them becoming an intolerable nuisance. No method has yet been devised.whereby rats can bo exterminated in a city and entireiy kept out. The best that can be done is to cheek their increase by constant war with traps' and poison, supplemented by canine and feline assistance. No pied pipers live in these days to rid the town by their magic notes of the plague of rodents, and such useful music as the Pied Piper of Hamelin made is not expected of our city organists. In Wellington there is a City Council employee whose business it is to catch rats, and he makes monthly returns of his progress in the war of extermination. But unfortunately tho lady rats quickly make up any thinning of the ranks caused by tho activities of this zealous exterminator, and so tho war goes on incessantly. A twelve months' return from Wellington's official ratcatcher shows that he actually caught 1563 of these vermin. But that is by no means the total number of deaths in rat land for which ho has been responsible. Many more rats than that have taken the poisonedNbait which he has craftily laid for them, subsequently to creep away to thoir nests and holes to die. At a rough estimate there aro at least a thousand people in Wellington who regularly use poison or traps for rats, hence tho number of these rodents killed annually must bo considerable. Auckland employs a whole-time ratcatcher, who last year accounted for over 7000. . Every city in v Now Zealand has its rats, but the rat population of Wellington is nothing compared with what it used to be. Improved sanitation and methods for the disposal of refuse have helped towards keeping down tho vats, which now find tho struggle to make a living much more exacting than it used to be. Wellington, may be said to be comparatively free front rats, compared with somo cities, but there seems little hope that hero or anywhere else tho rodents will bo exterminated. It is not so long ago that groups of rats might be seen, in daytime as well as at night, playing and feeding in side streets and passages in the city, but this is exceptional now, and for this improved state of affairs the thanks of the community aro due to those whose business it is to guard the welfare of the people. In this campaign the Health Department lends a powerful hand. In its bacteriological examination of rat corpses—and' it examines hundreds in a year-—it is ever on the look out for signs d£ any dread germ making its appearance. Eats and plague aro the terrors of any sea-port.