AN INGENIOUS CAMPER.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 8 October 1924, Page 7

AN INGENIOUS CAMPER.

HOW RATS WERE DEFEATED. A camper was much annoyed bj rodents stealing his provisions anil gnawing food and clothing. He was fishing various streams in a lonelv strip, and had neithe.r traps nor poison, as these articles do not form part of a fisherman’s equipment. Also it was too much of a journey to go to the nearest village. Finally he hit upon an invention that worked to a charm. He took an empty bottle, rolled the lower half in a piece of burlap to hold it firmly, and laid it on the edge of a box. Directly under the /projecting part of the bottle he set a pail three parts full of water. To. the end cf the bottle neck he tied a piece of raw fish, a delicacy both rats and mice find irresistible. In preparing the trap he was careful to use only articles the rats had been used to running over every night, as a irat is the most suspicious and cautious creature in the world, and wary of trusting himself on anvthing new to. him. Next morning he found ten- rats of assorted sizes drowned in the pail, and in three nights he caught fifty-eight altogether. The rats, craw]inn- on the slippery neck of the bottle in the effort to reach the bait which hung just out of .reach below, tumbled off in the water. He set the trap again the fourth night, but neither then nor any other night while he remained in camp did a rat go near it.—New York Times.