WILD RATS

Southland Times, Issue 18964, 11 June 1923, Page 6

WILD RATS

QUEER LONDON TRADE. An advertisement offering “1,000 wild rats for sale’’ calls attention to yet another of the queer trades by which Londoners earn their living (remarks a writer in the Manchester Guardian!. The headquarters of the trade lie in a small side street off the Borough Road, and seem a curious place from which operations involving the capture of 24,000 rats in a half-year should be directed. Yet from there men go out to all corners of the British Isles guaranteeing to clear any ship, warehouse, or mansion of rats within two or three days. When they arrive they open their campaign with an expert survey of the premises, by which they are able to find exactly where and when the enemy is to be found. Then they get to work with nets and a ’.rap which is a family secret. Their captives (Norwegian, old English black, or ship) are sold largely to the hospitals at 4d a head; selling for the amusement of terriers is happily prevented by the RS P.C.A. Eleven years ago there was a curious development of the business. Up to then the ship rat. had not. been caught in England. But two years before the war the chief of this firm returned from, a foray in Queen Victoria Street, and found thathe had brought back with him a cargo of ship rats. Since then they have spread over the West End, and recently some were caught as far into the country as Chesterfield. The theory in the trade is that food shortage on board ship has driven the rats to land.