RATS
“Let us return for a moment to the rodents, the habitual prey of the
night-birds. You do not know them all, by any means, but we ought not
to pass them by; for if some, like the hare and the rabbit, are useful
to us, still more are very destructive. You remember those two pairs of
incisors, so long and sharp, that I told you about when I described the
rabbit’s teeth. All rodents have similar incisors. To keep them sharp
and prevent them from overlapping too much by growing too long, which
would make it impossible for the animal to feed itself, the rodent must
wear them down by constant friction as fast as they grow. Consequently,
these terrible incisors have, so to speak, no rest; they must always be
nibbling something, no matter what. Thus the harm they do us is much
greater than you would suspect from the size of the animal. How much
actual food does a mouse need for one meal? Very little,
unquestionably. A mouse is so small that a single nut will fill its
stomach. Don’t think, however, that one day’s ravages are confined to
that one nut. After the nut is eaten, the animal will proceed, perhaps,
to gnaw a hole in a bag, reduce a piece of cloth to tatters, chew up a
book, or drill a hole in a board, simply and solely to whet its teeth.
And the damage caused by rats and mice in our dwelling-houses is
matched by other damage caused by other rodents in the fields. You must
make the acquaintance of all these destroyers.”
“For my part,” Jules confessed, “I shouldn’t, if I saw it, know the
field-mouse that you told us about in your talk on night-birds.”
“I know rats and mice such as we have in the house,” said Emile, “but
that’s all.”
“And yet,” rejoined his uncle, “I very much doubt whether you have any
real knowledge of the rat. I will begin with it.
“The common or black rat is more than twice the size of a mouse. Its
coat is nearly black above, and ashy gray underneath. It lives in
granaries, thatched roofs, and abandoned ruins. If it fails to find a
lodging to its taste, it burrows a hole for itself. It is not a native
with us, but is thought to have come from Asia in the wake of the
armies returning from the Crusades. To-day the common rat is seldom
mentioned in our country; another foreign rodent has come in, the
Norway or brown rat, which, being larger than the common rat, has waged
war against it and almost wiped out the species. We have not gained by
the exchange; quite the contrary, the Norway rat being a much more
troublesome creature. The true rat, the black rat, is rare now,
especially where the other abounds; and that is why I doubt that any
one of you is familiar with it. What you call a rat is more than likely
to be one of these Norwegian invaders. Don’t forget the color—black—and
you will have no difficulty in recognizing the true rat.
“The mouse is much more familiar to you. It has been known from the
earliest times all over the world. Need I describe this little rodent,
so well known for its liveliness, its wily nature, and its extreme
timidity, which makes it scuttle away to its hole at the slightest
alarm?”
“We all know the mouse very well,” Jules assured him.
“The Norway or brown rat, also known as the sewer-rat, is the largest
and most troublesome of all European rats. It attains a length of
nearly a foot, without counting the tail, which is scaly like the
mouse’s and a little shorter than the body. The largest and strongest
Norway rat can cope with a cat. Its presence in Europe dates only from
the middle of the eighteenth century, and it seems to have been brought
from India in the hold of ships, which it commonly infests. It has now
spread all over the world. Its coat is reddish brown above and ashy
gray underneath.
“Norway rats frequent storehouses, cellars, sewers, slaughter-houses,
and dumping grounds. Everything is food to these filthy and audacious
creatures, and they even dare to attack a sleeping man. In large towns
they multiply so fast as to cause serious alarm. The vicinity of the
slaughter-house of Montfaucon in Paris is so undermined with their
innumerable burrows that the buildings there are in danger of
collapsing. To preserve them from this disaster it is necessary to
protect their foundation against the attacks of the rodents by means of
a deep enclosing belt of broken glass bottles.”
“What attracts them in such numbers to these places?” asked Jules.
“The abundance of food, the dead bodies of slaughtered horses. In one
night, if left in the slaughter-house yards, dead horses are devoured
to the skeleton. During severe frosts if the skin is not removed in
time the Norway rats get inside the body, stay there, and eat all the
flesh, so that when a thaw comes and the workmen begin to skin the
animal, they find inside the skin nothing but a host of rats swarming
among the bare bones.”
“But don’t the people there have any cats to protect them?” asked
Emile.
“Cats! The Norway rats would eat them alive, my boy, in no time. They
have something better, however—dogs, both terriers and bulldogs, that
run the rats down in the sewers with astonishing cleverness and break
their back with one bite. The bulldog—that’s the kind of cat you need
for such mice. This hunt in the sewer, moreover, must be frequently
repeated, for Norway rats multiply with frightful rapidity, and if we
were not careful the town would sooner or later be endangered; the
horrible creature, strong in its numbers, would devour all Paris. In
December of the year 1849 two hundred and fifty thousand rats were
destroyed in a few days as the result of a single hunt.
“In the country the Norway rat frequents the banks of foul streams; it
enters kitchens through sink-holes; it gets into hen-houses and
rabbit-warrens by undermining the walls. It haunts cellars and stables,
but rarely makes its way into high granaries, doubtless because of its
liking for filthy drainage and any kind of offal, which can be found
only on ground floors and in basements. It pounces upon eggs and young
fowls, and even has the boldness to suck the blood of full-grown
poultry and rabbits. When it cannot get animal food, which is its first
choice, it will eat grain and vegetables of all kinds. No sort of food
is rejected by this filthy glutton. To get rid of it you can hardly
count on the cat, for usually pussy is afraid to attack it. Nor are
night-birds strong enough to battle with it, except the eagle-owl,
which does not abound in any numbers. The trap and poison are our only
remaining means of overcoming this redoubtable foe.
“The field-mouse is a little larger than the ordinary mouse. Its coat,
which closely resembles that of the Norway rat, is reddish brown above
and white underneath. Its eyes are large and prominent, its ears nearly
black, and its feet white. Its tail, which is very long, like that of
the common mouse, is thinly covered with hair and is black toward the
end. The field-mouse frequents woods, hedges, fields, and gardens. It
cuts down the stalks of grain to get at the ears, of which it nibbles a
few kernels and wastefully scatters the rest. In its quest for food it
unearths newly planted seeds, takes a taste of the young shoots that
have just come up, gnaws the bark of shrubs, and feasts on growing
vegetables. Its ravages are all the more serious because it lays up
provisions against a time of need. In storage chambers more than a foot
underground, beneath some tree trunk or rock, it collects grain,
hazelnuts, acorns, almonds, and chestnuts, often going a considerable
distance to get them. One such store-room is not enough; it must have
several, for it has a way of foolishly forgetting where its treasure is
buried. In winter the field-mouse ventures to approach our houses and
makes its way into our cellars where fruit and vegetables are kept, or
it establishes itself in great numbers in our granaries.
“The dwarf rat or harvest-mouse is the smallest rodent of France. It is
a graceful creature, smaller than the common mouse, and of a yellowish
tawny color, which is brighter on the rump than elsewhere; but the
belly, breast, and throat are a beautiful white, and the tail and feet
a light yellow. The ears, which stand out but very little beyond the
fur of the head, are rounded and hairy, and the eyes are prominent. The
dwarf rat lives exclusively in grain-fields and feeds on grain. After
the harvest it takes refuge in the stacks of grain, especially in
oat-stacks, but is never bold enough to enter houses. I am telling you
about this pretty little rodent not so much because I begrudge it the
few grains of oats it steals from us as because I wish to acquaint you
with its nest.
“Other rats rear their young either in a hole in a rock or a wall or in
a burrow dug for the purpose. The harvest-mouse, however, scorns these
stifling quarters; it must have an aërial nest like that built by
birds. So it brings together several wheat-stalks as they stand in the
field, interlaces them with bits of straw, and builds, half-way up from
the ground, a nest as beautifully made as any bird’s. This nest is
spherical, interwoven with leaves on the outside and padded with moss
on the inside. It has only one little side opening, through which the
rain cannot enter. Suspended at the height of several feet on the
flexible support of the grain stalks, it swings to and fro with the
slightest wind.”
“How, then,” asked Emile, “does the little mouse manage to get in and
out of its nest?”
“It climbs up one of the stalks, being so small that this serves it
perfectly as a ladder.”
“If I ever come across a harvest-mouse I sha’n’t have the heart to do
it any harm. It may go on eating oats in its pretty little nest, for
all I care; I sha’n’t try to stop it.”
“Here,” concluded Uncle Paul, “I will end my account of the chief
representatives of the rat family in these regions. They are five in
number: the black rat, the mouse, the Norway rat, the field-mouse, and
the harvest-mouse.”