Rat hole

“ It is a difficult matter to stop the burrowing of rats; the best plan is to fill the holes with Portland cement mixed with bits of bottle glass broken in small pieces. It is said that quicklime will temporarily prevent rats from entering a hole, as the lime burns their feet. A friend of mine lately told me of some wonderful Japanese bird-lime which he uses. It is spread on a board, and will retain any rat that puts even one foot on it. An albino variety is common, and is sold for pets. Rats are partial to certain scents, and some are consequently used by trappers. ”

“ The spike should be sharp, so as easily to enter the ground and feel for a lost hole. This will constantly save a long dig and much time; besides, one can often bolt a rat by a few well-directed prods in a soft bank—not that I approve of this, as there may be more than one rat in the hole, and by prodding out one you are contented to leave others behind. No, I think the ferret should go down every hole challenged by the dogs, as then you are pretty sure of making a clean job of it. ”

“ A number of the most fearful men made a dash for the elevator. They were driven back by a torrent of rats climbing up the elevator shaft. Then fear came—and panic. With gun and heel, and broken chairs for clubs, they started in to kill rats, and for every one they killed, a hundred fastened to them with chisel teeth. To make it worse, the lights went out, and they were there in the dark, with mutilation as a beginning and death as an ending, and still the rats poured into the room, up the elevator shaft and out of the hole in the wall. ”

“ I have seen one Rat kill another, when put into the large cage, and afterwards eat him; and once had an old she Rat, big with young, which she brought forth in the cage, and immediately eat them; for there is no kind of vermin whatever so savage as a Norway Rat; again, when you find they have taken to a rick of any sort of corn or hay, take some dead Rats, put some arsenic over them, as before observed, then place one in each hole they have made in the thatch, and it will make them all forsake the rick ”

“ In a little while a rustling will be heard, and the rats steal out to gulp the raindrops on the thatch and the herbage near by. We have seen a rat so thirsty that in spite of being driven back to his hole each time he appeared, every half-minute he would again attempt to reach a farm-yard puddle. A farmer who shot at one rat killed no fewer than seven, which had crowded to drink from a wayside pool. ”

“ I lose the hole, come down on roots as thick as my leg and stones that strike fire as the spade strikes them; and so two hours of discomfort to all drift by, and I am just feeling about for the last time with the spike end of the spade, when I again hit off the hole and, opening it out, come upon a nice warm rat's nest made of leaves, with the ferret curled up snugly with a dead rat.
"Home, dogs, home! Cheer up, Jack! Cold are you, and wet? Well, never mind; only two miles, and we will walk fast. Pepper, Pepper, Wasp, Wasp, where on earth have you got to? ”

“ She lives hunting. Nothing ever escapes her; one sniff at the deepest and most turn-about [Pg 46] hole is enough. If the rat is not in, on she goes in a minute; but should it be ensconced deep down in the furthest corner, she stops at once and just turns her head round and says quietly to me, "Here's one." Then, whilst I am getting out a ferret, over the bank she goes, in and out the hedge in all directions, and never fails to find and mark every bolt-hole for the other dogs to stand at that belongs to the one where the rat is. ”

“ WHEN WORKING FERRETS FOR RAT-CATCHING
always work them unmuzzled. Make as little noise as possible, as Rats are very bad to bolt sometimes. Never grab at the ferret as it leaves the hole, nor tempt it out of the hole with a dead Rat. The best way is to let the ferret come out of its own choice, and then pick it up very quietly, for if you grab at it, it is likely to become what we call a “stopper;” and never on any account force a ferret to go into a hole. ”

“ They are both nice cheerful young dogs that it is a pleasure to see either at play or work, but they are yet young and too apt to get excited and wild. They will, when a rat is out of his hole, in a hedge, dash up and down the entire length of the field, making enormous jumps in the air, during which time they listen keenly for the rustle of the rat in the grass ”

“ Foundation walls should project a foot or more above the ground in order to protect the wooden parts of the building, and this also lessens the opportunity for rats to gnaw through the wall. A rat is not likely to cling to the exposed exterior of a building a foot above the ground while it gnaws a hole through wooden sheathing or siding. ”

“ Then the ratting spade was engaged instead of being free to mump a rat on the head in a hurry, or point out a likely hole to the dogs. When a ferret was wanted, all the others would dash out and have to be hunted about to be re-caught. ”

“ They are well-known to both men and dogs, and the latter bolt on ahead and arrive first; and when we come up we find them all clustered round a hole in a high bank 'midst thick dripping bushes. In goes a ferret, but not in the way I like to see. There is no hurry, no ecstatic wriggle of the tail as it slowly draws itself into the hole. Then all stand round expecting to see a rat take a header into the pond ”

“ The presence of wood rats in a building, cave, mine tunnel, or talus slide can be detected in several ways. The white, mineral-like incrustation formed by the urine of many generations of wood rats is usually conspicuous on rocks near their homes. A strong musky odor pervades the atmosphere in every habitat occupied by wood rats. Wood rat feces, consisting of hard, black cylinders one-half inch long and three-sixteenths of an inch in diameter, are invariably found scattered on stones or exposed areas of ground. ”

“ All this disfigurement is indeed the work of a curious little rodent popularly so named and about the size and color of an ordinary rat. He is never seen above ground if he can possibly help it. He digs innumerable branching underground tunnels at depths varying from one to six feet, and these mounds of sand are simply the "dump heaps" which, in his engineering operations, he finds it necessary to make. ”

“ They use ointment which they rub on their hands and with this same composition they cover their arms, which is very distasteful to the rats, who will not bite at any human flesh that is anointed with this preparation. These men wear large slouch hats, and pursue their calling in all seasons, to make a living. Often they have terrible battles with the enraged colonies of rats, and not a few of the rat-catchers have been over- [Pg 633] powered in the sewers when attacked, and their bones whiten many of the brick beds and slimy crevices of these dark and dismal underground passages. ”

“ Such a loss would go far toward rat proofing any premises. A common cause of rat depredations in warehouses is the construction of platforms a few inches off the floor upon which to pile flour and other produce. Such platforms provide permanent shelter for rats and should be eliminated. Boards may be laid flat on the concrete floor with no spaces between them to afford rat harbors; or, if this is not sufficient proof against dampness, the platforms should be raised a foot or more off the floor to admit light. In such a place a rat does not feel safe and will not stay. ”

“ Up above, in the open air, they are to be seen in swarms sharing our watchfulness. This gun-shaken valley is honeycombed with their little round funk-holes, into which they flash at any sudden noise. It is merely going downstairs where we are all at home.
The social instincts of the rat are less highly developed. His visible visits to the mess are rarer, but we overhear his conversation in his tunnels that open on our shelves, the patter of his pink feet across the canvas overhead, and the muscular squirming of his body in some tight place about the sandbag wainscot. ”

“ It was a foot beyond the normal take-off of the grown rat. He flung his head round, put all the force he possessed into his hind legs, and leapt, upwards and backwards, towards the shelf. He caught it with his fore-paws, scrambled on to it, and, for the moment, was safe. He was only just quick enough. As his eyes turned, the brown rats had rushed forward, and, even as he clutched the ledge, he heard them pattering against the wall.
The floor below was a raging sea of rats; rats leaping over one another, jostling, biting, tearing. ”

“ This is the best time to catch them, as they are all under the floor of the building, and are very easy to catch in the night with the traps.
As a rule the Black or Drain Rats feed only in the night, very rarely in the day, as they are of a dirty nature, and prefer being in the drains. In my opinion the Black Rat is more vicious than the Brown. ”

“ Another common source of rat trouble, particularly in the northern half of the United States, is the hollow wall, within which rats find safe retreat and convenient runways leading to the haymow. In recent years fibrous insulating materials have been used to line the interiors of many farm buildings, and in most cases these have resulted in greatly increased rat infestation. Rats cut through these composition boards very easily and seem to be attracted by the facilities for breeding thus provided. ”

“ Of all wild animals, rats do the greatest number of "impossible" things. We have matched our wits against rat cunning until a madhouse yawned before us. Twice in my life all my traps and poisons have utterly failed, and left me faintly asking: Are rats possessed of occult powers? Once the answer to that was furnished by an old he-one who left his tail in my steel trap, but a little later caught himself in a trap-like space in the back of the family aeolian, and ignominiously died there,—a victim of his own error in judging distances without a tape line. ”

“ They call for the liberal use of indestructible and noncombustible materials, as well-made concrete and steel, and these are too much for even the sharpest of rodent incisors. They include, also, fire stopping in double walls and floors and the elimination of all dead spaces and dark corners, and the rat is left no place in which to hide. They embody sanitary features that provide for hygienic storage of food, and the rat can not live without something to eat. ”

“ Carpenter was told by a trustworthy eyewitness, that she saw a number of rats safely convey some eggs down a flight of stairs, from a store room, to their own dwellings. They stationed themselves on each stair, and each egg, held in the fore paws, was handed from one rat to another the whole way. The rats who dipped their tails into a jar of treacle, into which they could not dip their paws, and suffered their companions to lick them afterwards, is a well known story.
Rats have often attacked children who have been left in a room by themselves ”

“ To destroy all the rats that were in the hold of that ship would be a serious undertaking, if not an impossibility, and I no longer thought of such a thing. The best plan, therefore, would be that which I had now hit upon: to stop up the main aperture, and also every other through which a rat could possibly squeeze his body, and thus be at once secured against either their intrusion or their attacks.
Without further delay, I “plugged” up the crevice with my jacket ”

“ Now and then, however, these crab-like creatures assumed the form of rats; and then my dream more resembled reality. I dreamt that they were in vast numbers around me, and menaced me from every side; that I had only my jacket to keep them off, and that I was sweeping it from side to side for that purpose. I thought they grew bolder and bolder as they saw how little damage I was able to do them with such a weapon; and that a very large rat, much bigger than any of the others, was encouraging them on to the attack. This was not a real rat, but the ghost of one—of that one I had killed! ”

“ The place was scarcely worth living in, so infested was it with these rats. The people found them in their breeches or petticoats when they put on their clothes in the morning, and it was nothing unusual to discover a rat’s nest in one’s shoes or pockets, or in one’s Sunday hat or bonnet.
The rats were great black creatures that ran boldly through the streets in broad daylight, and swarmed all over the houses. There was not a barn, or a cornrick, or a storeroom, or a cupboard, but they gnawed their way into it. ”

“ It was simply disgusting to witness that dreadful little terrier run at each rat, shake him for a second or two in the air and then drop him quite dead on the floor of the pit, while the roughs encouraged him to his work with shouts when the rat was destroyed quickly, but occasionally when a big and ferocious rat was attacked and showed fight in return, and when the terrier seemed to hang back for a moment, a perfect storm of curses and obscene epithets were rained on the unfortunate canine. ”

“ It’s dangerous work, though, for you see there is a wonderful deal of difference in the specie of rats. The bite of sewer or water-ditch rats is very bad. The water and ditch rat lives on filth, but your barn-rat is a plump fellow, and he lives on the best of everything. He’s well off. There’s as much difference between the barn and sewer-rats as between a brewer’s horse and a costermonger’s. Sewer-rats are very bad for dogs, their coats is poisonous.
“Some of the rats that are brought to me are caught in the warehouses in the City. ”