Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1882-02-23
The Housekeeper's Worst Enemy.

Woulu De III associated Kitchens, and
reservoirs of heat, and all the kindred
househould labor-saving machinery to
be thought of were applied to her case,
yet there are none that exceed in trouble
that given by vermin in the walls of a
house, and no vermin in diabolical ma
liciousness and intelligence equal the
nuisance of rats, which, for excess of
evil may have been banished from Eblis
itself.
The rat, in fact, is the housekeeper's
worst enemy, always of course putting
her own Incidence and procrastination
equaled by his own cupidity, his cupidity
by his cunning, his cunning by his cour-
age. Her larder is invaded by him by
day, her sleeping room by night; her
house itself is eaten up and reduced to
sawdust by his teeth, and her only salts
faction in contemplating him is that If
he lives long enough those teeth will
grow over each other SO that he can not
open his mouth to gnaw. She builds a
new kitchen when he has riddled the old
one, very likely, but she would have to
line her closets with sheet-iron to keep
him out of them. His sharp teeth may
be heard filing and scraping all day
long; they wake her out of sound sleep
at night; and as she hears him tumbling
around the rafters and behind the vain
scots, she can not tell in the dark wheth-
er it be he Or tramps, or burglars, or
fire, and he Injuries her nerves as much
as he inj ures her house. She fears to
leave the children alone in their beds in
the evening, fears to leave the sick, and
knows that even the dead are not safe
on their biers. She dare not keep arse
mic or strychnine in the house lest some
one else get it, and worse trouble than
that of the rats follow; she hates to buy
it, too, less the sudden death of anybody
in the circle of her acquaintance should
put her under suspicion; she breads to
use it when it is bought, lest the house
be made uninhabitable by the last vexa-
ton which the creatures that die of it
can leave for her to endure.
Ii she lives near a piece of water, it is
not only her house, but her yard. her
garden, her orchard, that are in ested,
and fairly undermined by the piI .alls of
the holes they dig; the roots iof her
apple trees are devoured; her hens are
bounced upon when stupid with sleep;
her chickens are snatched before her face
and eyes; her eggs are carried off warm
from the nest, and the food of the fowls
is shared by the bold interlopers with
ruinous robbery. She can not fight
them, for they will fly at her throat if
attacked; she can not drown them, for
they swim like bubbles; she can not
catch them, for her traps are as good as
laughed at by the wretches that figu-
ratively snap their fingers at them-and
if they were not, of what use would they
be where the creatures multiply a dozen
and a half at a litterp Her cat covers
before them, a useless object of con-
tempt; they make meal of the cats
kittens. Ii her home is a rural one,
ferrets are seldom to be had; she re-
membe the old Bishop Hattie who was
eaten to death by them in his tower, land
shudders at possibilities; she would
forswear her country for the sake of
living across the sea in Aberdeenshire
or Sutherlandshire, where a rat can not
be induced to stay; she thinks the old
myth mistake that founded ole earth
upon tortoise, believing it must have
been the old original rat; she doubts if
even the Pied Piper of Hamelin could
rid her of the pest for wilderness of
guilders; she wonders if, in the survival
of the fittest, this strong, inexterminable
brown Norway rat is not destined to
destroy the human race, and take the
earth to itself; she does not see anything
strange in the circumstance that people
with shattered nerves, whether from
delirium or other causes, see such things
as rats-she is beginning to see nothing
else in the universe herself.
He is an intruder, this fierce little pest,
at the best, and belongs to a conquer
ing army He came into Europe from
Asia, he came to England from Nor
way, he comes over to America by |
means of every ship that touches our
ports; he has destroyed our own rat,
which, bad as it was, seems now supe-
rior being in remembrance; he is all |
the more terrible that he takes care of |
his old and sick, and so swells his num-
Der; and the only mercy to be found in
the visitation is that he frequently eats
up his companions, taking care to turn |
the skin inside out with a nicely to the |
very toes.
And meantime sort of nervous hor- !
ror follows the neighborhood of these |
small deer; the housekeeper afflicted by
them knows that they are the creatures
of uncanny legend; that certain awe
some mysticism surrounds them; that
they have unknown intelligences which
warn them when house is going to
burn down, or ship to sink, in full sea-
son to desert in safety, and be met
away in platoons; that of old,
if not now, they were wont to flee be-
fore rhyming anathemas addressed to
them vocally, and quit the place where
such were delivered, and instantly obey
a letter written to them, and sealed with
butter, politely requesting their depart
ere that, in fact, every rat born is pos
5essed of little demon more untamablc
and vindictive than the armies of de-
mons that went wherever Cornelius
Agrippa did. She reads old accounts Of
the various methods of attempted exter-
and laughs bitterly to see how
they have failed; she turns over prints
of Annibale Caracci's Rat-catcher OF
Bologna, of Vischer's Dutch Rat-catch-
or, of the Chinese Rat-catcher with his
cat in bag; and while she feels that
she could take them all to her. bosom as
dear friends with one common purpose
e. IL h. l., |