are forced to take the utmost precautions against the entrance of these
depredators; otherwise, they would troop in myriads from the sewers and
waterside premises, and, as they are undoubtedly in the habit of
communicating among their friends the whereabouts of any extraordinary
supplies, they would go on increasing day by day as the report of the good
news spread through rat-land. To repel their attentions, the wooden floors
and the under parts of the doors of the granaries are lined with
sheet-iron, and the foundations are sometimes set in concrete mixed with
glass--matters too hard for even their teeth to discuss.
Country rats in the summer take to the fields, and create enormous havoc
among the standing corn. They nibble off the ears of wheat, and carry them
to their runs and burrows, where large stores have been found hoarded up
with all the forethought of the dormouse. Farmers are often puzzled to
account for the presence of rats in wheat stacks which have been placed
upon the most cunningly-contrived stands. The fact is, these animals are
tossed up with the sheaves to the rick, where they increase and multiply
at their leisure, and frequently to such an extent, that a rick, seeming
fair on the outside, is little better than a huge rat-pie.
The propensity of the rat to gnaw must not be attributed altogether to a
reckless determination to overcome impediments. The never-ceasing action
of his teeth is not a pastime, but a necessity of his existence. The
writer of an interesting paper on rats in _Bentley's Miscellany_ has
explained so clearly the dentistry of the tribe, that we extract his
account:--
"The rat has formidable weapons in the shape of four small, long, and
very sharp teeth, two of which are in the upper and two in the lower
jaw. These are formed in the shape of a wedge, and by the following
wonderful provision of nature have always a fine, sharp, cutting edge.
On examining them carefully, we find that the inner part is of a soft,
ivory-like composition, which may be easily worn away, whereas the
outside is composed of a glass-like enamel, which is excessively hard.
The upper teeth work exactly into the under, so that the centres of
the opposed teeth meet exactly in the act of gnawing; the soft part is
thus being perpetually worn away, while the hard part keeps a sharp,
chisel-like edge; at the same time the teeth grow up from the bottom,
so that as they wear away a fresh supply is ready. The consequence of
this arrangement is, that, if one of the teeth be removed, either by
accident or on purpose, the opposed tooth will continue to grow
upwards, and, as there is nothing to grind them away, will project
from the mouth and turn upon itself; or, if it be an under-tooth, it
will even run into the skull above. There is a preparation in the
museum of the Royal College of Surgeons which well illustrates this
fact. It is an incisor tooth of a rat, which, from the cause above
mentioned, has increased its growth upwards to such a degree, that it
has formed a complete circle and a segment of another; the diameter of
it is about large enough to admit a good-sized thumb. It is
accompanied by the following memorandum, addressed by a Spanish priest
to Sir J. Banks, who presented it to the Museum: 'I send you an
extraordinary tooth of a rat. Believe me, it was found in the Nazareth
garden (to which order I belong). I was present when the animal was
killed, and took the tooth; I know not its virtues, nor have the
natives discovered them.'"
We once saw a newly-killed rat to whom this misfortune had occurred. The
tooth, which was an upper one, had in this case also formed a complete
circle, and the point in winding round had passed through the lip of the
animal. Thus the ceaseless working of the rat's incisors against some hard
substance is necessary to keep them down, and if he did not gnaw for his
subsistence, he would be compelled to gnaw to prevent his jaw being
gradually locked by their rapid development.
The destructive nature of the rat, the extraordinary manner in which he
multiplies, and his perpetual presence--for where there is a chink that he
can fill, and food for him to eat, there he will be, notwithstanding that
a long line of ancestors have one after another been destroyed on the
spot[11]--necessitates some counteracting influence to keep him within due
bounds. This is done by making him the prey of hunting-animals and
reptiles, beginning with man, and running down the chain of organized life
to the gliding snake. The poor rat, although he doubtless does service as
a scavenger, and must have his use in fulfilling some essential purpose of
creation, finds favour nowhere: every man's hand, nearly every feline paw,
and many birds' beaks are against him. The world thinks of him, as of the
pauper boy in "Oliver Twist,"--"Hit him hard; he ain't a'got no friends."
Dwelling in the midst of alarms, he might be supposed to pass an uneasy
and nervous existence. But it is nothing of the kind. The same Providence
which has furnished him with the teeth suitable to the work they have to
perform, has endowed him with the feelings proper to his lot; and no
animal, if he be watched from a distance, appears more happy and
complacent. In danger he preserves a wonderful presence of mind, and acts
upon the principle that while there is life there is hope. His cunning on
such occasions is often remarkable, and evinces a reasoning power of no
contemptible order:--
"A traveller in Ceylon," says Mrs. Lee, in her entertaining "Anecdotes
of Animals," "saw his dogs set upon a rat, and, making them relinquish
it, he took it up by the tail, the dogs leaping after it the whole
time. He carried it into his dining-room, to examine it by the light
of the lamp, during the whole of which period it remained as if it
were dead,--limbs hanging, and not a muscle moving. After five minutes
he threw it among the dogs, who were still in a state of great
excitement, and, to the astonishment of all present, it suddenly
jumped upon its legs, and ran away so fast that it baffled all its
pursuers."
The sagacity of the rat in eluding danger is not less than his craftiness
in dealing with it when it comes. A gentleman, Mr. Jesse relates, who fed
his own pointers, observed through a hole in the door a number of rats
eating from the trough with his dogs, who did not attempt to molest them.
Resolving to shoot the intruders, he next day put the food, but kept out
the dogs. Not a rat came to taste. He saw them peering from their holes,
but they were too well versed in human nature to venture forth without the
protection of their canine guard. After half an hour the pointers were let
in, when the rats forthwith joined their hosts, and dined with them as
usual. If it comes to the worst, and the rat is driven to bay, he will
fight with admirable resolution. A good-sized sewer-rat has been known to
daunt for a moment the most courageous bull-terrier, advancing towards him
with tail erect, and inflicting wounds of the most desperate nature. The
bite of any rat is severe, and that of a sewer-rat so highly dangerous,
that valuable dogs are rarely allowed by their masters to fight them. The
garbage on which they live poisons their teeth, and renders the wounds
they make deadly. Even with his great natural enemy and superior, the
ferret, he will sometimes get the advantage by his steady bravery and the
superiority of his tactics. Mr. Jesse describes an encounter of the kind,
the circumstances of which were related to him by a medical gentleman at
Kingston:--
"Being greatly surprised that the ferret, an animal of such slow
locomotive powers, should be so destructive to the rat tribe, he
determined to bring both these animals fairly into the arena, in order
to judge of their respective powers; and having selected a fine large
and full-grown male rat and also an equally strong buck ferret, which
had been accustomed to hunt rats, my friend, accompanied by his son,
turned these two animals loose in a room without furniture, in which
there was but one window. Immediately upon being liberated, the rat
ran round the room as if searching for an exit. Not finding any means
of escape, he uttered a piercing shriek, and with the most prompt
decision took up his station directly under the light, thus gaining
over his adversary (to use the language of other duellists) _the
advantage of the sun_. The ferret now erected his head, sniffed about,
and began fearlessly to push his way towards the spot where the scent
of his game was strongest, facing the light in full front, and
preparing himself with avidity to seize upon his prey. No sooner,
however, had he approached within two feet of his watchful foe, than
the rat, again uttering a loud cry, rushed at him with violence, and
inflicted a severe wound on the head and neck, which was soon shown by
the blood which flowed from it; the ferret seemed astonished at the
attack, and retreated with evident discomfiture; while the rat,
instead of following up the advantage he had gained, instantly
withdrew to his former station under the window. The ferret soon
recovered the shock he had sustained, and, erecting his head, once
more took the field. This second rencontre was in all its progress and
results an exact repetition of the former--with this exception, that,
on the rush of the rat to the conflict, the ferret appeared more
collected, and evidently showed an inclination to get a firm hold of
his enemy; the strength of the rat, however, was very great, and he
again succeeded not only in avoiding the deadly embrace of the ferret,
but also in inflicting another severe wound on his neck and head. The
rat a second time returned to his retreat under the window, and the
ferret seemed less anxious to renew the conflict. These attacks were
resumed at intervals for nearly two hours, all ending in the failure
of the ferret, who was evidently fighting to a disadvantage from the
light falling full on his eye whenever he approached the rat, who
wisely kept his ground and never for a moment lost sight of the
advantage he had gained. In order to prove whether the choice of this
position depended upon accident, my friend managed to dislodge the
rat, and took his own station under the window; but the moment the
ferret attempted to make his approach, the rat, evidently aware of the
advantage he had lost, endeavoured to creep between my friend's legs,
thus losing his natural fear of man under the danger which awaited him
from his more deadly foe."
Driven from his defensive position, the rat continued his attacks, but
with an evident loss of courage, and the ferret ultimately came to the
death-grapple with his crafty antagonist. A similar battle was witnessed
by a friend, with the difference that the rat, being undisturbed in his
advantageous position with regard to the light, finally beat off the
ferret, which was absolutely bitten into shreds over the head and muzzle.
The repetition of the same conduct by a second animal shows that this
particular species of cunning is a general faculty of the tribe. The main
superiority of the ferret is in his retaining his hold when once he has
fastened on his prey, sucking his life's blood the while; whereas the rat
fights by a succession of single bites, which wound but do not destroy.
The snake prevails by his venom. Mrs. Lee relates the particulars of a
combat in Africa, in which rat and snake repeatedly closed and bit at one
another, separating after each assault, and gathering up strength for a
fresh attack. At length the rat fell, foamed at the mouth, swelled to a
great size, and died in a few minutes.[12]
If he can be savage when self-protection requires, he also has his softer
moments, in which he shows confidence in man almost as strong as that
exhibited by the dog or cat. An old blind rat, on whose head the snows of
many winters had gathered, was in the habit of sitting beside our own
kitchen fire, with all the comfortable look of his enemy, the cat; and
such a favourite had he become with the servants, that he was never
allowed to be disturbed. He unhappily fell a victim to the sudden spring
of a strange cat. A close observation of these animals entirely conquers
the antipathy which is entertained towards them. Their sharp and handsome
heads, their bright eyes, their intelligent look, their sleek skins, are
the very reverse of repulsive; and there is positive attraction in the
beautiful manner in which they sit licking their paws and washing their
faces--an occupation in which they pass a considerable portion of their
time. The writer on rats in _Bentley's Miscellany_ relates an anecdote of
a tame rat, which shows that he is capable of serving his master as well
as of passing a passive existence under his protection. The animal
belonged to the driver of a London omnibus, who caught him as he was
removing some hay. He was spared because he had the good luck to be
piebald, became remarkably tame, and grew attached to the children. At
night he exhibited a sense of the enjoyment of security and warmth, by
stretching himself out at full length on the rug before the fire; and on
cold nights, after the fire was extinguished, he would creep into his
master's bed. In the daytime, however, his owner utilized him. At the word
of command, "Come along, Ikey," he would jump into the ample great-coat
pocket, from which he was transferred to the boot of the omnibus. Here his
business was to guard the driver's dinner; and if any person attempted to
make free with it, the rat would fly at them from out the straw. There was
one dish alone of which he was an inefficient protector. He could never
resist plum-pudding; and though he kept off all other intruders, he ate
his fill of it himself. These are by no means extraordinary instances of
the amiable side of rat nature when kindly treated by man, and we could
fill pages with similar relations. But it seems, in addition to his other
merits, that he possesses dramatic genius. We have heard of military
fleas, we have seen Jacko perform his miserable imitation of humanity on
the top of a barrel-organ; but who ever heard of a rat's turn for tragedy?
Nevertheless, a Belgian newspaper not long since published an account of a
theatrical performance by a troop of rats, which gives us a higher idea of
their intellectual nature than anything else which is recorded of them.
This novel company of players were dressed in the garb of men and women,
walked on their hind legs, and mimicked with ludicrous exactness many of
the ordinary stage effects. On one point only were they intractable. Like
the young lady in the fable, who turned to a cat the moment a mouse
appeared, they forgot their parts, their audience, and their manager, at
the sight of the viands which were introduced in the course of the piece;
and, dropping on all-fours, fell to with the native voracity of their
race. The performance was concluded by their hanging in triumph their
enemy the cat, and dancing round her body.
The rat, as we have said, has many enemies: the weazel, the pole-cat, the
otter, the dog, the cat, and the snake hunt him remorselessly all over the
world. Man, however, is his most relentless and destructive enemy. In some
places he is killed for food, as in China, where dried split rats are sold
as a dainty. The _chiffonniers_ of Paris feed on them without reluctance.
Nor is rat-pie altogether obsolete in our own country. The gipsies
continue to eat such as are caught in stacks and barns, and a
distinguished surgeon of our time frequently had them served up at his
table. They feed chiefly upon grain; and it is merely the repulsive idea
which attaches to this animal under every form that causes it to be
rejected by the same man who esteems the lobster, the crab, and the shrimp
a delicacy, although he knows that they are the scavengers of the sea.
They were not always so nice in the navy. An old captain in her Majesty's
service informs us that on one occasion, when returning from India, the
vessel was infested with rats, which made great ravages among the biscuit.
Jack, to compensate for his lost provisions, had all the spoilers he could
kill, put into pies, and considered them an extraordinary delicacy. At the
siege of Malta, when the French were hard pressed, rats fetched a dollar
apiece; but the famished garrison marked their sense of the excellence of
those which were delicately fed by offering a double price for every one
caught in a granary. Man directs his hostility against the rat, however,
chiefly because he considers him a nuisance; and the gin and poison, cold
iron and the bowl, a dismal alternative, are accordingly presented to him.
With the former he is not so easily caught, and will never enter a trap or
touch a gin in which any of his kind have fretted and rubbed. Poison is a
more effectual method, but it is not always safe. Rats which have been
beguiled into partaking of arsenic instantly make for the water to quench
their intolerable thirst, and, though they usually withdraw from the
house, they may resort in their agony to an in-door cistern, and remain
there to pollute it.[13] The writer who calls himself "Uncle James," and
who, for a reason that will shortly appear, is exceedingly anxious to
impress the public with the belief that the best mode of getting rid of
the rat is to hunt him with terriers, states that a dairy-farmer in
Limerick poisoned his calves and pigs by giving them the skim milk at
which rats had drunk when under the pangs produced by arsenic. One mode of
clearing them out of a house is either to singe the hair of a devoted rat,
or else to dip his hind-quarters into tar, and then turn him loose, when
the whole community will take their leave for a while. But this is only a
temporary expedient, and in the interim the offenders are left to
multiply, and perchance transfer their ravages to another part of the
domain where they are equally mischievous. The same objection applies to
the remedy of pounding the common dog's-tongue, when gathered in full sap,
and laying it in their haunts. They retire only to return. The Germans
turn the rat himself into a police-officer to warn off his burglarious
brethren. Dr. Shaw, in his General Zoology, states that a gentleman who
travelled through Mecklenburg about thirty years ago saw one at a
post-house with a bell about its neck, which the landlord assured him had
frightened away the whole of the "whiskered vermin" which previously
infested the place. Mr. Neele says that at Bangkok, the Siamese capital,
the people are in the habit of keeping tame rats, which walk about the
room, and crawl up the legs of the inmates, who pet them as they would a
dog. They are caught young, and, attaining a monstrous size by good
feeding, take the place of our cats, and entirely free the house of their
own kind. But the most effectual and in the end the cheapest remedy is an
expert rat-catcher. Cunning as an experienced old rat becomes, he is
invariably checkmated when man fairly tries a game of skill with him. The
well-trained professor of the art, who by long habit has grown familiar
with his adversary's haunts and tactics, his hopes and fears, his
partialities and antipathies, will clear out a house or a farmyard, where
a novice would merely catch a few unwary adventurers and put the rest upon
their guard. The majority of the world have, happily for themselves, a
better office, and the regular practitioner might justly address the
amateur in much the same words that the musician employed to Frederick the
Great, when the royal flute-player was expecting to be complimented on his
performance: "It would be a discredit to your Majesty to play as well as
I."
"Uncle James," however, is of a different opinion. This author considers
that every man should be his own rat-catcher, which he evidently believes
to be the most improving, dignified, and fascinating calling under the
sun, as he considers rats themselves to be the crying evil of the day,
second only in his estimation to the grand injustice of the old corn-law.
Indeed, we cannot see from his own premises how the evil can be second to
any great destructive principle, earthquakes included. He takes a single
pair of rats, and proves satisfactorily that in three years, if
undisturbed, they will have thirteen litters of eight each at a birth, and
that the young will begin littering again when six months old; by this
calculation he increases the original pair at the end of three years to
six hundred and fifty-six thousand eight hundred and eight. Calculating
that ten rats eat as much in one day as a man, which we think is rather
under than over the fact, the consumption of these rats would be equal "to
that of sixty-four thousand six hundred and eight men the year round, and
leave eight rats in the year to spare." Now, if a couple of rats could
occasion such devastation in three years after the original pair marched
out of the ark, how comes it that the descendants of the myriads which
ages ago co-existed among us have not eaten up the earth and the fullness
thereof? Uncle James conveniently forgets that animals do not multiply
according to arithmetical progression, but simply in proportion to the
food provided for them. He must not, however, be expected to be wiser than
Malthus on the subject of animal reproduction, and he has the additional
incentive to error, that he evidently paints up his horrors for an artful
purpose. There can be no sort of doubt that he has several well-bred
terriers to dispose of, and hence the following panacea for all the evils
which afflict society.
"A dog, to be of sound service, ought to be of six to thirteen pounds
weight; over that they become too unwieldy. I would also recommend,
above all others, the London rat-killing terrier: he is as hard as
steel, courageous as a lion, and as handsome as a racehorse!--[Uncle
James is a Londoner, of course.] Let the farmers in each parish meet
and pass resolutions calling upon their representatives in parliament
to take the tax off rat-killing dogs. Let them devise plans for
procuring some well-bred terriers and ferrets, and spread the young
ones about among their men. Let there be a reward offered of so much
per head for dead rats, and let there be one person in each parish
appointed to pay for the same. Rats are valuable for manure; let there
be a pit in each locality, and let this man stick up an announcement
every week, in some conspicuous place, as to the number of rats
killed, and by whom. Then, what will be the result? Why, a spirit of
emulation will rise up among the villagers, and they will be
ransacking every hole and corner for rats. _Thus will a tone of
cheerful enterprise, activity, and pleasantry come in among them_,
'with a fund of conversation;' and instead of that crawling, dogged
monotony which characterizes their general gait and manner, they will
meet their employers and go to their labour with joyous steps and
smiling countenances."