House Rats and Mice

Cooperative efforts to destroy rats have taken various forms in different localities. In cities, municipal employees have occasionally been set at work hunting rats from their retreats, with at least temporary benefit to the community. Thus, in 1904, at Folkestone, England, a town of about 25,000 inhabitants, the corporation employees, helped by dogs, in three days killed 1,645 rats.

Side hunts in which rats are the only animals that count in the contest have sometimes been organized and successfully carried out. At New Burlington, Ohio, a rat hunt took place some years ago in which each of the two sides killed over 8,000 rats, the beaten party serving a banquet to the winners.

There is danger that organized rat hunts will be followed by long intervals of indifference and inaction. This may be prevented by offering prizes covering a definite period of effort. Such prizes accomplish more than municipal bounties, because they secure a friendly rivalry which stimulates the contestants to do their utmost to win.

In England and some of its colonies contests for prizes have been organized to promote the destruction of the English, or house, sparrow, but many of the so-called sparrow clubs are really sparrow and rat clubs, for the destruction of both pests is the avowed object of the organizations. A sparrow club in Kent, England, accomplished the destruction of 28,000 sparrows and 16,000 rats in three seasons by the annual expenditure of but £6 ($29.20) in prize money. Had ordinary bounties been paid for this destruction, the tax on the community would have been about £250 (over $1,200).

Many organizations already formed should be interested in destroying rats. Boards of trade, civic societies, and citizens' associations in towns and farmers' and women's clubs in rural communities will find the subject of great importance. Women's municipal leagues in several large cities already have taken up the matter. The league in Baltimore recently secured appropriations of funds for expenditure in fighting mosquitoes, flies, and rats. The league in Boston during the past year, supported by voluntary contributions for the purpose, made a highly creditable educational campaign against rats. Boys' corn clubs, the troops of Boy Scouts, and similar organizations could do excellent work in rat campaigns.

The measures needed for repressing and eliminating rats and mice include the following:

1. The requirement that all new buildings erected shall be made rat-proof under competent inspection.

2. That all existing rat-proof buildings shall be closed against rats and mice by having all openings accessible to the animals, from foundation to roof, closed or screened by door, window, grating, or meshed wire netting.

3. That all buildings not of rat-proof construction shall be made so by remodeling, by the use of materials that may not be pierced by rats, or by elevation.

4. The protection of our native hawks, owls, and smaller predatory mammals—the natural enemies of rats.

5. Greater cleanliness about markets, grocery stores, warehouses, courts, alleys, stables, and vacant lots in cities and villages, and like care on farms and suburban premises. This includes the storage of waste and garbage in tightly covered vessels and the prompt disposal of it each day.

6. Care in the construction of drains and sewers, so as not to provide entrance and retreat for rats. Old brick sewers in cities should be replaced by concrete or tile.

7. The early threshing and marketing of grains on farms, so that stacks and mows shall not furnish harborage and food for rats.

8. Removal of outlying straw stacks and piles of trash or lumber that harbor rats in fields and vacant lots.