RATS IN A BUNCH

Hokitika Guardian, 28 April 1927, Page 4

RATS IN A BUNCH

A NOV HI. PH ED I.C'A M EXT. DUNEDIN, April 22. With their tails hopelessly knotted together a hunch of nine rats fell from the rafters to the iloor of F sited on the Birch St. waterfront yesterday. Mr Sunnier, the delivery clerk at the sited, says he armed himself with a stick and attacked the entangled rodents, killing eight. The other, he states, was a black rat measuring; about ten inches along the body, and it escaped. A Dunedin “Star” reporter to-day saw the hunch of eight. Four of them were of about four inches body length, and the others abtut six incites. One of the small rats was black. The tails in the bunch numbered eleven (including three portions’) and Air Sunnier is of the opinion that two kept hold of the rafters when the bunch fell, each of the pair having a short part of its tail dragged off. He said that the big rat ran under the wharf.

The knot of tails showed signs of a sticky substance, and it is possible that when foraging the rat.s got treacle or syrup on their tails before returning to the nest, and that when the tails were enmeshed the substance prevented them being easily freed. A camera man secured a good snap of the clustered dead.

Tn five years, Aft Sumner remarked, he had seen scarcely one rat about the shed until four months ago, when the eats disappeared. According to MV .T. E. King, the corporation’s chief sanitary inspector, rats are not particularly numerous at present, though they are troublesome in all parts of Dun eel i n . To his knowledge, the Wharf St tip is free of them and the sandhills tip is, too. Beyond the distribution of poison the sanitary department is doing nothing at present to reduce their numbers. At places where foodstuffs were handled, said Mr King, there was n certain fear of laying poison, hut barium carbonate, of -which the department had a stock, could be used witli-

out danger. Lithographic varnish was also sometimes used. Maple syrup from America and carriage varnish would hold them, said Mr Sumner. Xo maize syrup has been stored in F. shed for twelve months, but treacle and syrup arrive almost every week.