Douglas daily dispatch., 1927-12-25

us what he thought of us. If he was
engaged in eating in the cellar some
It'd bit he had stolen from the pantry
when l happened to come down there
to tixsthe furnace and switched on the
light, he would give me mean look
from his beady eyes, and bare his
fangs at me. If I threw something at
him he would back away into cor
ner and snarl at me. Once he actually
took three or four belligerent leaps IN
my direction, causing me to back
hastily up the stairs. l am probably
stronger than rat, but I have no
desire to enter into a personal con-
flict with one.
At night the creature would wait till
we had gone to sleep, and then begin
to roll down stairs some WalnutS which
the children had stored in the attic
for the winter You could hear them
drop from one step to another, and
then you could hear the rat come down
"plop," after them. If l got up and
pounded with cane at the head OF
the stairs he would scurry away, and
stay away till he decided / had gone
to sleep again. He had an uncannq
means of knowing just how long this
would require. Then he would begin
again. never found any of the wal
nuts. 1 knew that he had taken them
by the diminishing size of the pile.
After week or two, in which time
had so little sleep that was a nervous
wreck 1 screened the walnutS by a
wire mesh. Then, for time there was
peace.
But not for long. Apparently dis
satisfied with the cold cement floor OF
the cellar, or the burroW he had dug
under it, the rat came upstairs to find
better quarters. He found none to his
liking that suited him at first But
he nosed out spot between two joists
that seemed promising, and Oegan to
heW an entrance to it. Almost on the
hour of IL he would begin to gnaW at
the timber which was just over my
bed, and keep it up till rose and
thumped heavily on the ceiling with a
broom handle. Then, as in the case
of the walnutS, he would wait me out.
There was no stopping him. AT last,
however, I became so exhausted that
/ could sleep through the noise, and
not until in an incautious moment
when he backed himself down through
the plaster and fell on the foot of my
bed did he disturb me.
I awakened quickly and determined
to make an end of the matter for
once and all, shut all the doors and
windows, seized the broomstick, turned
on the lights and began hunt. The
rat darted from place to place. He
showed his teeth and snarled, but the
broonstick had him cowed. He made
no offer to attack me. The chase was
futile, however. Being spryer than I
he always eluded me easily and at
last dashed into a closet, and finding
a mouse hole in one corner of it
squeezed himself through it and de-
parted.
The struggle was subsequently pur-
sued by opposing guile to guile.
tried to trap him. bought every kind
of a trap I could think of, and set
and baited them ALL He sprung each
one every night and took away the
bait. put out poison for him, but he
seemed immune to it, the poison in
his nature probably acting as an anti
dote to that in his stomach. Then I
got a cat. 1t was a large, fierce cat
of the Tom cat breed. But instead Of
doing it's duty by me, it slept through
the day, which was the rats time for
sleeping, and went out to patrol the
streets at night when the rat was at
work.
AT last one day somebody told me