By examining the Fire Marshal's Report of New York City from 1868 to 1882, we learn that rats have been the cause of 79 fires during 12 years, making an average of five fires a year. This is on account of the rats' strong propensity for nibbling matches. In the same report is a warning against the loose and careless manner in which matches are left in pantries and closets infested by rats and mice with a fondness for this kind of diet. The great attraction for the rodents in the matches is the phosphorus, which these useful articles contain in abundance, and which the rats are able to scent out from a great distance.
XI.—RATS AS FOOD.
If you were lunching on something similar in taste to roast partridge, and some one told you, after you had finished, that it was only domestic house rat, your interior machinery would probably be disarranged—to such an extent is the bare mention of the word rat repugnant to our senses and stomachs.
In the course of an experiment, the writer has cooked and boiled rats, and has found that their meat is of a very tender quality, and of a white, inviting appearance, withal, although he never went the length of partaking of it. Our objection to the rat's serving as food is too deeply rooted and profound to be removed, although there are a great many animals whose flesh forms our staple food that have habits much dirtier, and who do not nearly live upon as cleanly a diet (and this is a broad statement) as our despised house rat. From this eulogium we gently but firmly exclude the rat gentry of the sewers. We must give the Chinese credit for having overcome the effete European prejudice against the rat as food. Seemingly, it is the most highly prized dish that the sons of leprosy have in their bill of fare. The crews of the American and English vessels lying in Canton harbor used to amuse themselves greatly in catching a rat, and then holding the kicking animal by the tail so that the Celestials in the junks alongside could get a good view of it. The Mongolians would then get very much excited, utter exclamations of a gobbling, clucking sound, and as soon as the spluttering, frightened rat was flung from the ship an uproarious scramble followed, that made them look like so many monkeys quarreling over a cocoanut.
A writer tell us, in a well-written magazine article, that he has lived fifteen years in China, and has had "experience at public banquets, social dinners, and ordinary meals, in company with all classes of people, but was exceedingly surprised at never having seen cat, dog, or rat served up in any form whatsoever." We are sorry the gentleman neglects to state whether he'd know the difference. The odds are twenty to one that he wouldn't; because, as he knows himself, the Chinese are excellent cooks, and can prepare a good meal from what in other countries would be thought offal. He makes the admission, however, that "there are some peculiar people in China, as well as elsewhere—credulous and superstitious—some of whom believe that the flesh of dogs, cats, and rats, possesses medicinal properties. For instance, some silly women believe that the flesh of rats restores the hair; some believe that dog meat and cat meat renews the blood, and quacks often prescribe it. What the Chinese really do eat does not vary much from that found on American tables; but there are certain dishes not on our programmes that are considered delicacies by everybody—such as edible bird's-nests and sharks' fins." To this we can add conscientiously, and upon weighty private authority—fried split rat, stewed dog, and curried cat with rice. In this place it would be appropriate of us to say something of the peculiarities of Chinese food—of the way the dogs and cats are carefully bred for the palates of the Chinese epicures; how these former animals are invitingly exposed for sale in the marketplaces; and we would willingly describe the methods of the dog and cat breeders, and the manner of curing and cooking the rats—but want of space forbids. We will merely state that there are many cases in which rats were eaten much nearer home than China; but, as the persons undertaking the experiment were slowly starving to death, and would have quickly eaten each other rather than accept the jolly alternative of dying by hunger, these instances are not of a remarkable nature, and are consequently unworthy of note in the present annals.
XII.—RAT NESTS.
Rats are impartial in their building sites—they have contentedly built their nests in the wretched and filthy peasant's hovel and in the most palatial and luxurious residences of kings, and a human habitation must indeed be in the extreme of squalor, dirt and decay where they are not found sprawling. Shakespeare pithily expresses this in the "Tempest:"
"In few they hurried us aboard a bark,
Bore us some leagues to sea, where they prepar'd
A rotten carcass of a boat, not rigg'd,
Nor tackle, sail nor mast—the very rats
Instinctively had quit it."
The rat living in a house prefers warm, soft quarters, and invariably gets within comfortable distances of stoves, ranges, heaters, steam-pipes, etc. This is a very dangerous habit, because his nest is always constructed of inflammable materials. At times he also lugs matches into it, and then if the steam-pipes should become overheated, the matches blaze up and spread the flames. We have read in the newspapers of a great many fires afterwards found to have been caused in this way. The rat's nest is made of black and colored silk, of linen, woolen and cotton materials, bits of canvas, dirty rags, fur, silk stockings, and antique lace of much value jumbled together with string and crumpled paper. In one instance we knew of a rat to make use of a building material more out of the ordinary run than these, as it consisted simply of fifteen hundred dollars in greenbacks that had been put under the carpet of a room for safe keeping, and which was afterwards found in mutilated fragments, thatched together, forming this queer old mercenary rat's abode. The rat uses his nest too as a storehouse, and here he lays by quantities of edibles for a rainy day. The writer came across a nest, once upon a time, the sole building materials of which were those undergarments, both masculine and feminine, fashioned so slenderly, but which we dare not mention. This nest contained a peck or so of beans, though in the house where it was built beans had not been stored nor used, the writer found out, for at least three months. Out of doors or in fields the rats' nests are built of hay, leaves, shavings, and wool. The rat is, besides his other praiseworthy qualities, an inveterate old thief, and in decorating his dwelling picturesquely he becomes quite lavish, as gold rings, diamonds, jewels of every value, and gold and silver watches, that had been missed, were found in rat nests. Here they were generally discovered set off with much taste by a piece of salt bag. In one rat's nest I found a set of false teeth in perfect condition. The rat could not have wanted to use them himself, because they were several sizes too big for him. He probably wanted them for a tool-box or jewel-case or some other equally useful object. The writer remembers reading in some odd book of a good-natured person who had discovered a family of young rats in a piano that stood in a room for some time unfrequented. They had made themselves so much at home in the interior of the instrument that the owner was unwilling to disturb them by playing upon it. The female rat probably wanted to get her young to some safe place away from her liege lord, and had succeeded in gnawing up through the leg of the piano. She had brought with her, in which to build a nest, a dirty striped stocking big enough to have belonged to some distinguished Dime Museum fat lady.