MENACE OF THE RAT.

Taranaki Daily News, 19 March 1921, Page 10

MENACE OF THE RAT.

REAL ENEMY OF MANKIND. The International League of Red Cross Societies has joined the efforts to control the menace of the common rat. A bulletin issued by the league’s medical department states that besides carrying bubonic plague, the ra.t spreads trichinosis?, certain varieties of tapeworm, infectious jaundice and “rat bite fever.” He has been accused of causing attacks of food poisoning, and of transmitting ringworm to the horse. He/ is, moreover, one of the most persistent destroyers of property known to man, and there is not a single useful task which he performs to justify his existence. The extraordinary migratory qualities of the rat render an isolated attack on it of* little value. Living equally well under almost any stirroundings, able to swim and climb in an almost unbelievable manner, exceedingly wary of traps, shunning poisen after it has once observed its effects, and willing to fight fiercely when cornered, the rat migrates singly or in bodies when the attack on it at last becomes too determined. The second barrier in ridding the world of ?ats is the fact that the animals are so extraordinary prolific. The brown rat produces several litters a year; and it is said that within nine months one pair of rats will produce 980 descendants. There are natural enemies of rats, of course, else the rodents would soon overrun the earth. The owl is one of the most formidable, unfortunately the owl is often, destroyed by the very people whom it protects.* The weasel, the pine martin, the kestrel, the ferret and the mongoose are by far the most useful; but it is the cat which haunts the alleys and the backyards that is the most valuable. It is not probable that the rat will ever be completely exterminated. He is too universal, too prolific, too cunning, for that. What cah be done is to bar him from our cities and our Ships, from,our granaries and from our warehouses. This can be done only with the co-operation of all the people who recognise the rat no longer as a picturesque rodent, but as a real enemy of mankind —as real as the bacilli the diseases he aureads.