The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1909-08-27
MOSQUITOES AND
RATS DANGEROUS
Continued from Page Ten.)

the rats ability as a rope walker IS
considered. | have seen rat gallon
with all appearance of enjoyment
along an inclined electric cable from
a church steeple on one side of a
street into the second story of a hotel
on the other. Others have been seen
travelling along the telephone wires
from house to house, and on shipboard
they frequently have runways on small
pipes along which they scurry in per-
feet security. When a ship then is
Tended off six feet from the dock and
her gangplank is lifted or guarded she
is still freely accessible because all her
mooring lines are only SO many high
ways rats can and do pass with ease
and in perfect safety.
This fondness for ships and sea
travel is shared by the various species
of the rat family but the Mus norvegi-
Gus has earned the reputation of be-
ing the greatest traveller of them all.
He almost invariably predominated
among those killed by fumigation on
shipboard, That he finds life ON ship
board easy and the conditions salts
factory is proved by the numbers that
are destroyed from time to time by
fumigation. While in charge of the
outgoing quarantine work in San Fran
cisco the chief engineer of small
lumber carrier called to book his yes
sci for fumigation The vessel was
small, only 260 tons, and carried moth
ing but lumber and her own ship s
stores but the chief declared she was
overrun with rats, showed where they
had eaten the patches from his shoes
to prove it. declared they robbed him
of his sandwich when he came off
watch, and requested me to give her a
thorough fumigation. This was done.
The next a. nj. the agent of the vessel
phoned to ask how / measured my
rats, stating that on this vessel they
Rad collected "a barrelful and seven. -
Three hundred and ten on little YES
sci OF only 260 tons burthen.
On another vessel after one fnmiga-
ton 100 were collected Immediately
after fumigation but few days later
when the vessel was undergoing ex-
tensive repairs 425 others were found,
a total of 525 on one small vessel.
These numbers are small, however,
when compared with the results OBJ
tanned on others, i. e., on grain car
rving vessels For instance vessel
was fumigated some years since in
Bombay where 1900 were destroyed at
one time and the Minnehaha, a new
vessel. only nine months in commits
sion fumigated in London, England,
in May, 1901, yielded bag of 100
rats.
Adaptability.
In addition to his qualities as
sailor and tight rope walker the rat
has the power of adapting himself to
most unusual conditions and surround
ings. At the beginning of the out
going work in San Francisco it was
urged that rats either could not or
would not live on any part of tank
ships engaged exclusively in carrying
oil, owing to the fumes and vapors
that permeated the entire vessel. This
statement was unquestionably correct
for those compartments in which the
oil itself was stored or carried. 1t was
not true, however, for the superstruo
ture of these vessels, for in these COM
partments on one of these oil carriers
sixty rats were found after one funi-
CATION and of the thirty or more yes-
sells of this class chat were regularly
fumigated in San Francisco although
the odors of oil or gasoline were quite
strong in these living compartments
not one was found that did not har-
Dor rats. Still more remarkable as
illustrating the rats adaptability was
the fact that from those large refrig
Grating plants which some vessels ear
ried and in which fumigation had not
been practiced for a long time rats
were obtained that had grown a fur
an inch and half long to protect
themselves from the cold.
The constant and almost universal
presence, then, of rats on shipboard
can not be doubted, and if it could
the results of fumigation wherever
practiced with sulphur, would serve to
settle the question, for they are found
under all conditions even on the most
unlikely vessels.
How do these rodents gain access to
vessel7 It has been the custom to
assume that they came on board from
the docks over the side when this was
possible. and when it was not, as when
the vessel was Tended off or stood too
high out of the water, that they made
use of the gangways, mooring lines,
hawsers, ETC., as avenues of communi-
cation. 1t is still the practice there
fore, in enforcing anti-rat precautions,
to compel the ship to fend off six feet
(60 from the dock, to wear rat fun
nels on all lines, and to raise the gang
way from the dock at night.
These make up the precautions or
dinarilv taken to prevent the rats
from getting on ships. AS stated above
they are based on the assumption that
these are the common avenues Of en-
trance. That these precautions do much
good can not be dobuted but in the
writer's opinion they do not entirely
cover the case for there remains one
other road of ingress, one of the most
important. If not the most important,
which these precautions do not and
can not block and through which rats
constantly get on board and that is
through the medium of cargo itself.
There is at present nothing to pre-
vent access in this manner to a vessel
and the route IS so easy that there can
DE no doubt that whole families of
rats are carried on board in this way.
I