The Douglas independent. [volume] (Roseburg, Or.) 187?-1885, 1884-10-11
THE RAT.cATcHsR OF PARA.
The Roa CONSTRUCTOR of Brazil and
the Work He Does.

para Cor. Pittsburg Chronicle.l
The rat-catcher of Para is not cat, an
owl, ferret, compound of wire and
springs, paste of poison, a terrier, nor
an ambitious boy with borrowed shot
ON his left hand and otherwise mutilated
and disfigured for life, but the boa of the
country, the Giboa, or boa constructor.
The great serpent is left at large in many
of the stores and warehouses and in sew
eral of the residences. During the day
it coils itself in the cellar into the like
ness of section of hawser in the hold
of vessel; or lies in the store-room be-
hind the bales and boxes in the simisi-
tude of discarded stove-pipe, or it
loops itself among the grinders and
rafters of the garret into the semblance
of Brobdignaggian Bologna sausage
hung up to dry; as harmless as the usual
serpent of monstrous size depicted IN
glowing eolors on the swinging sign of
canvas at the door of the side-show to
travelling circus in the United States
At night, however, when all good peo-
pie of the city are suspended in their
hammocks, the ratter awakes and takes
dation to the roof-tree, and the ease
and expedition with which the legless
incarnation of longitude goes up and down
the stairs, and under, around, and about
the chairs and tables, in the pursuit OF
rats and mice and such small deer, is
something marvelons for the bats and
bombyxes and other night-seels and fly
ers to behold imagine, from all have
heard. Presumably, many a time and
oft, the head of a family in getting out
of his hammock, steps upon the cool
body of his rat-cateher to shudder in the
instant of his misapprehension that it is
the corpse of one of his numerous
progeny. that has succumbed in the night
to one of the myriad diseases incident to
childhood and Para, and tumbled out on
the floor.
Presumably, also, now and then, the
chief clerk, returning late from the club
and staggering up to his swinging and
very uncertain couch and falling across
it, gets his sprawling hands against the
very ,ubstance of the serpent in his de-
lirium to convince him of the error of
his ways at once and work reforma-
ton in his habits in the course of time
1IcSuHidUiy, d1oOs OGCdo1OId1S. uuIlilS
dearth of rats and mice, member of
the family disappears mysteriously,
leaving nothing behind him out of which
surmise or the smallest quantity of
soothing syrup can be sucked by the sur
yivors, except his hat and other noon
day apparel But have not heard of
the occurrence of any such accident in
reality, and the serpent may be set down
in troth as a remedy for rats as safe as
any in use in any other part of the
world, except China, where the people
are their own at-catchers-every man
for himself and the devil take the hind
most and where, to make assurance
doubly sure and take a. bond on fate,
John Chinaman, after killing a rat, cooks
and eats it.
But after all, when it is considered the
grand role the serpent has played in
many of the religions of the globe, re-
ceiving divine honors in more than one
country at the hands of untold millions,
it is rough on one of the most magnif-
cent species the world has ever seen to
take it down from the temple of worship
and put it to catching rats in ware
house. But this is an iconoclastic age;
and the serpent is not the only god that
has succumbed to Mammon.