RATS MUST GO!

Waikato Independent, Volume XXII, Issue 2580, 3 August 1922, Page 7

RATS MUST GO!

Rats are our most expensive “luxury,” says “Answers.” It is said that the rat population of London is at least equal to its human population. The effort to keep down their numbers and reduce their ravages costs many thousands every year.

The householder, will learn with horror that rats destroy in a year the value of 44,000,000 tons of coal, or 2,640,000,000 loaves of bread ; while the 'beer-drinker will be specially spurred to action to Bry to kill his; daily rat, when he learns that were it not for the depredations of those rodents he could have 1,864,235,290 more bottles of beer.

The war was a great event in the history of Ra,tland. News of it was not censored as far as they were concerned. Their own system of “wireless” carried the news to the four quarters of the earth, and they came in myriads to share in the pickings of trench and camp.

If the Intelligence Department of the British Army could be armed with the special intellect of the Society of Rats, it would outmanoeuvre the world. In some ratlike way, which is another method of spelling magic, rats convey to one another that in the corner of the scullery is a contraption which smells nice • because there is in it a piece of bacon or the tail of a i bloater, which is desirable, and looks innocent, but is neither, as it is doubtless a trap ! Rats are born suspicious, and the older they get the more suspicious they grow, until any common or garden trap may be set for; months without effect. Even poison has the same sort of influence. When one or two rats have met their fate, the survivors take warning, and leave the most tempting bait untouched.

There was a time when the rat was regarded almost as a public benefactor—a sort of four-legged dustman, a scavenger that ate and so removed much that was harmful to man. The answer to all that is that this scavcngering should never be necessary in a civilised community, but still more that the investigations of the bacteriologist, the rapid strides made in sanitary science, have revealed the rat as an unmitigated pest. This may seem rough on rats, but the rougher it is the better for the health of the community, for the rat comes only next to the house-fly as a disease-carrier.

There was some news lately in the papers about the growth in numbers of the black rat, one of the nimblest and swiftest of quadrupeds ; but, although the black rat is a Britisher, he will never again re-establish himself as the paramount power in Ratland. The Levantine pirate, in the shape of the brown rat, is bigger, stronger, and thrice as ferocious as the black one.

The common rat of the sewer, the railway tunnel, and the hayrick is sometimes called the Norway .rat, but he is not common in the North of Europe—the far North, that is—and probably came from the Mediterranean countries. He arrived as a stowaway, and is a modern product of our huge and ever-growing foreign overseas trade.

Coming from poor lands like Syria, and Egypt and Tunis and. Turkey, he found Britain a land flowing with milk and honey—and other things—ousted the rat in possession, which was black and smallish, and took up his permanent abode in England. He is now counted by millions undoubtedly, but a rat census is a difficult idea to carry out. It is not always remembered that the rat is one of the most expert of animal climbers, and that is why goods are difficult to keep out of reach of these pests. Their claws can get a hold upon surfaces which look impossible for anything but an insect. No tree, wall, or paling is whilst their razor-like teeth, as hard as chilled steel, can bite through anything except metal or concrete. Fortunately, rats are confirmed cannibals. The mother will fight in defence of her young, but when the father visits his offspring it is generally with cannibalistic intentions. They generally eat the slain, and if badly pressed with famine the weak fmes of the tribe supply the depleted arder. So in a way they keep themselves within some sort of limits,