Keepers as a class have no love for rats; but there is one keeper who
regards all rats with the deadliest loathing, on account of a little
experience. He had taken a new berth, and arrived at the cottage which
was to be his home some days in advance of his wife, taking bread,
a ten-pound cheese, and a cask of beer, on which to subsist until
the more luxurious days of his wife's coming. Having found that the
outgoing keeper had carried off the front-door key, he brought his most
valuable possessions into his bedroom, including the bread, cheese, and
beer. Thoroughly tired with his journey and his unpacking, he slept
so well through the first night that some mysterious sounds, as in
a dream, failed to rouse him. On awakening, he discovered that rats
had paid a call, and had eaten every particle of the bread and of the
ten-pound cheese. They had even assaulted the bung of the beer-barrel,
happily for them and for the keeper without success. During the first
three months of his residence this keeper killed no fewer than 600 rats
in and about his old-fashioned cottage.
Thinking of the rats who assaulted the beer-barrel reminds us of the
story of a clever rat that drank from a wine-bottle by first inserting,
then licking, his tail. Rats are so cunning that one can believe almost
anything told of them. They suffer, at times, terribly from thirst.
There is no doubt that a dry breeding season means a small crop of
rats, which seems to support the theory that when hard pressed by
thirst larger rats kill the little ones for the sake of their blood.
When feeding on corn, in ricks or barns, a spell of rainless weather
means much suffering, even if dews compensate in some measure for the
absence of water. If you would see rats at their merriest, watch a
corn-stack on a summer evening when a shower has come after scorching
days. In a little while a rustling will be heard, and the rats steal
out to gulp the raindrops on the thatch and the herbage near by. We
have seen a rat so thirsty that in spite of being driven back to his
hole each time he appeared, every half-minute he would again attempt to
reach a farm-yard puddle. A farmer who shot at one rat killed no fewer
than seven, which had crowded to drink from a wayside pool.
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