RATS!

Evening Star, Issue 24919, 17 July 1943, Page 3

RATS!

(Written by " X.Y." for the ' Evening Star.') "Great concern is being felt in many parts of the Dominion over the increase in the number of rats. It is pointed out that a pair of rats can produce an appalling annual total of progeny."— News item. Something simply must be done; We are being overrun. While our birth rate slips downhill. Growing less and lesser, still. Two confounded Rats can rear Swarms of little Rats per year. They will eat All our meat, Make their nests Of our vests; There'll be scamperiugs and squealings Twixt our roof-trees and our ceilings; We shall find the whiskered vermin Worse than. Jap. or Wop, or German. • Let us draw up big (petitions To the Folk in High Positions We must get Cabinet To arouse the population to a vast Dominion-wide { (Rodent-Liquidation Campaign—or we'll all be Ratified. They will issue special rules For the children in our schools; Register and mobilise The Dominion's cat supplies; . Furnish diagrams and maps Of efficient home-made traps; And release Extra cheese, Adequate' For their bait; Send out district Rat Inspectors Armed with notebooks and detectors, Publicise per radio stations, .'lssue forms and regulations. With a threat of Court Proceeding For the careless and unheeding. And thev will Pass a Bill For empowering local bodies, on and

after certain dates. To provide for all disbursements by the means of Special Rates.

There'll be lectures on the brutes At our ■Women's Institutes; And the W.D.F.U. Will take up the movement, too; Everv Home Guard coalesce With" the local E.P.S. They will chase Round the place (Filled with zest) For the pest, Trying out the diverse merits Of their terriers and ferrets In ability to lug out ■ Every rodent from his dugout; Persevering, hot and hatless. Till the countryside, is Ratless. Save for slain Who remain For enumerative purposes—one copy to be kept, ✓ And one each for the Council and the Rat-Controlling Dept. *

So, by now you have been told How the Rat will be controlled, Like our eggs, and fruit, and meat, Until, when the job's complete, He will, doubtless, be as rare As the Orange or the Pear.