A FAMILY ATTACHED BY RATS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1348, 22 September 1886, Page 2

A FAMILY ATTACHED BY RATS.

The following appears in the Crommtll Arg tea: —On Wednesday night Mr Me Laughiin, the teacher of the Cardrona school, was startled from bis sleep by one of his children screaming oat that something had bitten his ear. Mr McLaughlin struck a match, and saw four or five rats running off the bed. He examined the child’s ear and found it torn in two or three places and the child’s face and ncek covered with blood. This child has been lying in a precarious state between ll f e and death for the last six days from rheumatic fever caught by sleeping on the fl jor of the house. Mr McLaughlin left a candle burning and went to sleep again. In aboot an hour a younger child was attacked and bit in several place In the palm of hia hand and his fingers, which were extended over the bad clobbers. This child was attacked on the face also, and the pillow was perfectly saturated wth blood. Towards morning Mr Me Laughiin flang himself on the bed and bad scarcely gone off to sleep when he felt a very acute pain under hia left eye, and putting up hia baud he laid it on a rat. Mr McLaughlin called in several of the resi lents attest the cuts and marks on the children and the blood.