A RAT STORY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 179, 1 September 1876, Page 13

A RAT STORY.

The number of rats inhabiting the rocky crevices and cavernous passages at the summit of Pike's Peak — says a correspondent of the Pueblo' ' Chieftain ' — have recently become formidable and dangerous. These animals are known to feed upon a kind of saccharine gum that percolates through the pores of the rocks, apparently upheaved by some volcanic action. Since the establishment of the Government signal station on the summit of the Peak, at an altitude of nearly 15,000 ft., these animals have acquired a voracious appetite for raw and uncooked meat, the scent of which seems to impart to them a ferocity rivalling the fierceness of the starved Siberian wolf. The most singular trait in the character of these animals is that they are never seen in the daytime. When the raoon pours down her queenly light upon the summit, they may be seen in countless numbers trooping around among the rocky boulders that crown the barren waste, and during the warm summer months they may be seen swimming and sporting in the waters of the lake, a short distance below the Peak, and of a dark, cloudy night, their trail in the water is marked by a sparkling light, giving the waters of the lake a bright and silvery appearance. A few days since Mr. John T. O'Keefe, one of the Government operators at the signal station upon the Peak, returned to his post, taking with him, upon a pack animal, a quarter of beef. It being late in the afternoon, his colleague, Mr. Hobbs, immediately left with the pack animal for the Springs. Soon after dark, while Mr. O'Keefe was engaged in the office forwarding night despatches to Denver and Washington, he was startled by a loud scream from Mrs. O'Keefe, who had retired for the night to an adjoining bedroom, and who came rushing into the office screaming : " The rats ! the rats !" Mr. O'Keefe, with great presence of mind, immediately drew around his wife a scroll of zinc plating, which prevented the animals from climbing upon her person, and although his own person was almost literally covered with them, he succeeded in encasing both of his legs each in a joint of stove pipe, when he commenced a fierce and desperate struggle for the preservation of life, being armed with a heavy cane. Hundreds were destroyed on every side, while they still seemed to pour with increasing numbers from the bedroom, the door of which had been left open. The entire quarter of beef was eaten in less than five minutes, which seemed to only sharpen their appetite for an attack upon Mr. O'Keefe, whose hands, face, and neck were terribly lacerated. In the midst of the warfare Mrs. O'Keefe managed to reach the office, from which she threw a coil of electric wire over her husband that sprang outward and spread itself over the room, then, grasping the valve of the battery, she poured all its terrible power upon the wire. In an instant the room was all ablaze with the electric light, and hundreds were killed by the shock, when the sudden appearance of daylight, made such by the coruscation of the heavily-charged wire, caused them to take refuge among the crevices and caverns of the mountain, by way of the bedroom window, through which they had forced their way. But the saddest part of this night adventure upon the Peak is the destroying of their infant child, which Mrs. O'Keefe thought she had made secure by a heavy covering of bed-clothing. But the rats had found their way to the infant (only two months old), and left nothing of it but the peeled and naked skull. Drs. Horn and Anderson have just returned to Colorado Springs from the Peak. It was thought at first that the left arm of Sergeant O'Keefe would have to be amputated, but they now believe it can be saved. — ' Denver (Colorado) News.'