HOME HEALTH GUIDE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 September 1943, Page 3

HOME HEALTH GUIDE

DANGERS OF RAT MENACE. INCREASE IN NEW ZEALAND. (By the Department of Health.) Reports from almost everywhere lately indicate that rats have become a greater menace than ever, and mat the job of keeping them in check is becoming a real problem. Not only are rats extraordinarily destructive, bui they are a menace to health through their capacity to spread such diseases as dysentery and food poisoning and possibly a form of jaundice. Evidence shows that in New Zealand rats are on the increase. It is going to require the co-operation of everyone to keep them under some sort of control — housekeepers, shopkeepers, warehousemen. Tho seriousness of the position is underlined by the fact that one pair of rats may, within nine months, produce as many as 880 of a progeny. Both preventive and destructive measures are necessary. All food supplies must be adequately protected, and all waste food and refuse must be kept in containers with close-fitting lids., All refuse around the place must be destroyed; rat burrows should be filled up with concrete and broken glass; powdered glass along a rat run is a deterrent. It is advisable to change your methods, as the rat is cunning. Use dogs or cats or traps or poison, and wherever there is extensive burrowing fumigation should be tried. The local authority will be able to suggest the steps that should be taken, and in all probability will*be able to provide the poison.