AN ADVENTURE WITH A RAT.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2430, 26 November 1892, Page 3

AN ADVENTURE WITH A RAT.

The terror of ladies at the appearance of rats or mice has become proverbial, and this well-known characteristic has been one of the strongest arguments used by the opponents of female franchise. Ladies, however, say that men are just as frightened of these vermin as women, only the deceivers ever manage to hide their terror under an assumption of sang froid or desperate flourishing with a poker, taking care that the rat’s line of retreat is left duly open. A lady thus relates an experience of hers to prove this ;—One night on retiring to her room she observed a rat run across the floor. To utter a shriek and jump on the bed was, as the novelists say, the work of an instant. Her husband, who is a trifle over six feet high, rushed into the room to ascertain the cause of the outcry, and, on being informed of the presence of the intruder, seized the poker and vowed to have the rat’s blood. He chased the animal around the room a few times, tlil it finally got into a corner under the bed and refused to be diglod"- ' The lady was all this time a * interested specto*-- very much • * " - -my and finding all the . 01 her husband to make the rat more away and resume the game fruitless and seeing that her better half had no intention of crawling under the bed and meeting the enemy on its own level, on all fours, took off her slipper, and, leaning over, threw it as hard as she could under the bed. The effect was startling, the sudden and unexpected bang against the wall was like an electric shock to the rathunter. It broke him all up. Ho dropped the poker and sprang up on the bed with an alacrity which would have charmed the proprietors of Wirth’s circus in search of a bounding jockey. The wife became too convulsed with laughter to explain matters, and in the meanwhile the rat took advantage of the diversion, “ winked his other eye,” and was seen no more.