“A SPORTING LIFE.”

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4442, 19 July 1922, Page 4

“A SPORTING LIFE.”

SYDNEY RAT-CATCHER’S STORY. The quiet, somewhat scientific atmosphere of; a meeting in the Education Department in Sydney called to discuss the life and habits of the plague rat was quickly dissipated when one of- the professional ratcatchers employed in the city was asked to give his impressions of the rodents and their ways. In a decidedly unconventional address no brought home points which his hearers will not easily forget (states the “Sydney Morning Herald”). He first took the ordinary, breakback trap, which almost everyone has set in his house from time to time, with varying success. Armed with a sample of this means of; detsruction he vividly described the reasons for occasional failure. “These traps are no good unless they are adjusted. It isn't everyone who can adjust .them. You need to call in professional assistance. In our profession we stiulv these things, and we can fix them up so that as soon as a rat touches them —bang, she's off! Of course, there are big rats. I know a man who was kept awake all night.by a rat running around with a trap round its neck. It had to be dispatched with a stick. The women are funny, sometimes. I ■ know a woman who set one of these trans so that if you trod on it it woul 1 not go off. Then she told me that the lyts were educated —they knew all about traps. She didn’t'! “They talk about rat-proof buildings. 1 know a building that, was put up and declared to be entirely ratproof. A lot o,f money was spent in

making it proof against them. Well, it was finished, and a week after the woikmen went the care,taker moved into his home on the roof. He was the first man in. I saw him the next morning. He told me that he would , not Jive there for £1 an hour. The rats mobbed him as’soon as he got to bed. They tore his furniture to bits. They pulled holes in his nice chintzcovered furniture to get at. the kapok. They pulled the stuffing out of the mattress he was lying on. They ate the front of his dresser right out to get at the food inside. He was nearly mad when I saw him. Y r ou see, when the foundations were going in the workmen had had tlieir lunch in the place, and threw’ their food down. Dozens of rats got into the basement, and the building was so rat-proof that. they couldn’t get out. After the work-, men left they got hungry. The caretaker was the first victim. He swears that if he had not. looked out they would have eaten him alive. The architect asked me how r I would have kept those rats out of the foundations. I told him I would have put. a tin fence round the place and put a man on the gate. “Some people look down on a ratcatcher. They don’t understand. They seem to think a rat-catcher’s Life is not much good. Well, I tell you it is all right. It’s a sporting life. It’s like going fishing. If a man goes fishing and gets no fisji he comes back in a bad state of mind and isn t fit company for his w’ife and children. Well, it's the same with a. rat-catcher if he has a bad day. Y r ou know, I'd just as soon be a rat-catcher as a politician any day. Set a few traps ir, Macquarie Street, and you’d catch a few, anyway.”