Evening star., 1939-02-12
4 REN may respect dogs for intelli-
/" gence. cats for grace and horses for
- - heautv hit the animal that trrlv

demands mans sober respect is the rat
i Behold the rat His depredations are of aston
/ ishing magnitude. He spreads diseases which
| have killed more men than all wars put
! together, and has destroyed more property
| than all other noxious animals He is blood
/ thirsty cannibal beside whom such destroyers
as Attila the Hun pale into insignifcance.
/ Salute the mighty rat. He accomplished
lob that stumped the Cars army He pre-
Sented Napoleon's army with typhus when
it invaded Russia and sent it limping away on
the most disastrous military retreat in his
tory. He carried bubonic plague to Europe
and saw it kill 25.OOO, GOO people over fifty
year period. At one time in London's history
the rats Black Death" wiped out large
proportion of the population. Bubonic plague
has taken over 100000 lives in India al
iIready in the present century. Moreover.
Through his destructive habits, the rat has
I ruined more property than could ever be
inventoried And his depredations are by no
means at an end.
How many rats are there in the United
Estates? Obviously no one could answer such
J a question with any real accuracy. The best
surveys indicate that in cities there is one rat
for each two people, and in towns, one rat
per citizen. On farms there are probably two
rats per person. So the total rat population
of the United States is somewhere in the
neighborhood of l3O,OOO.OOO. Each of these
7 rodents consumes fifty pounds of food year
and destroys about two dollars worth of
$3.50, 100000 - not including the money paid
to countless exterminating companies to rid
us of the pests.
Cities are fighting a winning war against
these invaders and in the past twenty years
have been able to cut the urban rat population
an estimated fifty per cent. Atlanta. Detroit
and San Antonio have staged tremendously
effective campaigns and Pittsburgh is about
ready to launch one. Greenwich. Connecticut.
. is in the midst of a campaign now - move
which, ironically enough. was made necessary
by sanitary measures that should have helped
| eliminate rats. Greenwich abandoned its city
k-dump, the happy home of tens of thousands
steady supply of food thus cut off, the rats
P1nvaded homes. The city appealed to the
United States Biological Survey which has
seventy y-five demonstrators always ready to
cooperate in any municipal determination
campaign. The war was on. But before we 90
into that. let s look at the villain of this piece.
himself: the rat
The rat is native of Asia He probably
followed the Crusaders bas,!, to Europe in the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The first
settlers introduced the black rat to the United
States and the brown rat came along during
the time of the Revolution The latter.
cannibal who likes hot blood and kills for the
love of killing, all but extermnated the black
rat The brown rat probably accounts for we'll
over ninety per cent of the United States
rat population today.
He is adaptable and prolific He is happy in
subtropical Florida and Texas, but can grow
warm enough coat to survive in cold-storage
warehouses. Given ample food and good living
conditions. the female can produce as many
as ten litters year. the CESSATION period being
twenty days The average litter contains ten
young. Potentially, pair of brown rats can
produce $4,000, 600 heirs in three year
period But nature works against such fecun-
dty The rat is his own worst enemy. Cann-
bal males destroy whole nestfuls of young.
Rats will eat almost anything: soap. var
nish from tables in furniture stores, glue from
library books, chickens and eggs. They will