Mexico weekly ledger., 1877-01-11
Some Ingenious Rats.

A lady residing in East King Street,
says the Lancaster (Penn.) Examiner,
has had a remarkable illustration of
that wonderful intelligence in the rat
family which we often read about but
seldom witness. She had several dozen
eggs stored away in the cellar in alarge
earthen vessel. They were covered
with lime-water to preserve them. For
some time past she was puzzled to
know in what the lime-water
leaked out Of the vessel, as she could
find no traces of a leak, and yet to keep
the eggs covered she had to fill it more
frequently than it could possibly evap-
crate.
The other day the servant called the
lady's attention to the fact that there
must be rats in the cellar, as she had
found egg-shells in the cork-shavings
bin on the opposite side of the room
from where the eggs were stored. An
examination revealed the fact that one
dozen and a half of the eggs had been
carried off, and the presumptive proof
is that the rats did it, as no other
creature had access to the cellar to
whose charge the theft could be justly
laid. "t#" - ESUft :
To get at the eggs in the vessel they
would have to rid it of a portion of the
lime-water, which they evidently drank.
This shows that the rat is a capital
Judge of a good medicine, as well as a
square meal. DR.. Wood, in the United
States Dispensatory, says that, mixed
with an equal easur of milk, which
completely covers its offensive taste, it
is an excellent tonic, and one of the
best remedies for i~rritability of the
stomach; that he has found a diet ex-
clusivelv of lime-water and milk to be
more effective than any plan of treat
ment in dyspepsia accompanied with
the vomiting of food. No doubt DR..
Rodent has discovered that the albu-
men, margarine and ~oleine-of the egg,
combined with the lime-water, is quite
as wholesome and p~alatable as the
milk, and that the stomach of a hungry
dyspeptic rat is just as good a place to
mix them in as the nurses medicine
glass in the sick-chamber up stairs!
DR.. Rat is well known to be as inge-
NOUS in mechanical devices as he is au
fait in the cuisine and materia nedica
of cellars and pantries. How did he
lift the eggs up two inches on the edge
of the crock and then lower them
twelve inches without breaking them?
We know that he engineers their trans
%portation long distances by causing one
rat to lie on its back while others roll
the egg upon him, which he clasps and
holds firmly in all-fours, as the s'sap-
pers and miners" drag him off by the
tail to those subterranean results of ro-
dent engineering which housekeepers
detest, but can seldom find or close
when found. This tail of the rodent,
by the way, is a most wonderful piece
of mechanism. 1t has more muscles
than the human hand; it is, in fact, q
chain of movable bones and muscles,
is covered with minute scales and short,
stiff hairs, rendering it prehensible
and capable of being employed as q
hand, balancer or projecting spring.
1t was no doubt a great help to the en-
glneer and his corps of assistants in
safely lowering the eggs from the top
of the vessel to the floor.
But this, perhaps, is not as astonish-
ing as a well authenticated incident
which took place in the same cellar a
few years ago. A. quantity of eggs were
placed on a shelf laid on light frames
suspended from the joist. The shelf
was six feet from the floor, and its only
connection with the joist above was by
the wooden pendants, the size of Or
binary roofing lath. The eggs disap-
pearing mysteriously, a search was in
stituted, and three If them found at the
entrance of a rat-hole in an opposite
corner, two of which were whole and
sound and one shell empty. 1t was
ol4-- - ~ L l
rats. That the process of engineering
by which they were removed must have
been ingenious no one can reasonably
doubt. Just how it was done we are
not prepared t o demonstrate.