A CHILD KILLED AND EATEN BY RATS.

Oamaru Mail, Volume I, Issue 224, 10 January 1877, Page 2

A CHILD KILLED AND EATEN BY RATS.

The number of rats inhabiting the rocky crevices and cavernous passages at the summit of Pike's Peak (says a correspondent of the Pueblo Chieftain) have recently become formidable and daugerous. The animals are known to feed on a kind of saccharine gum that percolates through the pores of the rocks, apparently upheaved by some volcanic action. Since the establishment of the Government signal-station on the summit of the Peak, at an altitude of nearly 15,000 feet, these animals have acquired a voracious appetite for raw and uncooked meat, the scentof which seems to impart to them a ferocity rivalling the fierceness of the starved Siberianwolfe. The most singular trait in the character of these animals is that they are neverseen in the daytime. When the moon poursdown her queenly light upon the summit,. . they may be seen in countless numbers trooping around among the rocky boulders that, crown the barren waste, and in the warm summer months they may be seen swimming and sporting in the waters of a lake, a short distance below the Peak, and of a dark, cloudy night, their trail in the water is marked by a sparkling light, giving the waters of the lake a bright and silvery ap-- , pearance. A short time since Mr. J"-ifc O'Keefe, one of the Government operators the signal-station iipon the Peak, returned tohis post, taking with him, upon a pack animal, a quarter of beef. It being late in the afternoon, his colleague, Mr. Hobbs, immediately left with tha pack animal for the Springs. Soon after dark, while Mr. O'Keefe was engaged in his office forwarding des. patches to Denver and Washington, he was. startled by a loud scream from Mrs. O'Keefe,, who had retired for the night to an adjoiningbedroom, and who came rushing into the' office screaming: "The rats! the rats!" Mr. O'Keefe, with great presence of mind', immediately drew around his wife a scroll of zinc plating, which prevented the animals', from'climbing upon her parson, and altlKvagh his own person was literally covered with them, he succeeded in encasing both his legs, in a joint of stove-pipe, when he commenced, a fierce and desperate struggle for the preservation of life, being armed with a heavy cane. Hundreds were destroyed on e;very side, while they still seemed to pour with increasing numbers from the bedroom, the door of which had been left open. The entire quarter of beef was eaten in less than five minutes, which seemed only to sharpen their appetites for an attack upon Mr:. O'Keefe, whose hands, face, and neck were: terribly lacerated. In the midst of the warfare Mrs. O'Keefe managed to reach theoffice, from which she threw a coil of electric? wire over her husband that sprang outward, and spread itself over the room, then gras{*ing the valve battery, she poured all its iSerrible power upon the wire. In an instant the room was all ablaze with electric light, and hundreds were killed by the shock, when- _ the sudden appearance of daylight, made such by the coruscation of the heavilycharged wire caused them to take refuge among the crevices and caverns, or the mountain, by way of the bedroom window, through which they had forced their way. But the saddest part of this night's adventure upon the Peak is the destroying of their infant child, which Mrs. O'Keefe thought she had made secure by a heavy covering of bed clothing. But the rats had found theirway to the infant (only two months old), and' left nothing but the peeled and naked skull.. Drs. Horn and Anderson have just returned, to Colorado Springs from the Peak. It was thought at first that the left arm of Sergeant O'Keefe would have to be amputated,, but, they now believe it can be saved.