XIII.—THE RAT'S MUSICAL TALENTS AND EYESIGHT.
Rats love sweet, soft, melodious tones, and a great many experiments have been made in taming rats thereby, but only with indifferent success upon the sharp-witted rodents, in spite of all the pretty stories to the contrary in the reading-books. So high is the rat's musical understanding rated, that there is a proverb among the people that rats immediately disappear from the house as soon as a young lady begins taking lessons on the piano. A mouth-harmonica seems to be the rat's favorite musical instrument, and its gentle strains exert the most power over him, far more than the tones of any other instrument. If the music be soft, mild, and pathetic, the rat will listen and come very near, for he is a very susceptible sort of beast, and, if closely observed, tears of sorrow, or of sad and tender reminiscence, will be seen coursing slowly down his cheeks. But if, on the contrary, the music be harsh, shrill, and discordant, such as would most likely be ground out by beginners, or if it proceed from a brass instrument, or drum, or if it be occasioned by a shotgun report, or explosion, it may drive the impressionable animals from places where they had been used to frequent. If, however, one is unsuccessful in trying to scare off the rats by noise at the first inning, a repetition will be of no avail.
The rat will take up his nest in all and any out-of-the way places, as he shuns the light and lives wholly in the dark and gloom. This is the cause of his poor sight; he can hardly see at all in the daytime, and in the night a little better. If you should meet with a rat by day, looking square in your face, depend upon it he isn't able to see you at all, in spite of the pretty gleam in his black eyes. His minutely acute ears, however, do him good service instead of eyes, so that he has very little occasion to miss the latter at all.
The rat is generally very timid, and extremely nervous, the slightest disturbance repelling him and making him shrink into obscurity and shadow. Yet it is his great peculiarity that he can adapt himself to any extremity of climate or description of place; he is found making himself at home in hotels, factories, public gardens, and other haunts of loud and constant noise, bustle, and confusion.
XIV.—RATS AS MORALISTS.
The Lord in making the rats is imputed to have done so to have them serve as scavengers for his wandering, wasteful tribes of children. But in our own day, as the majority of us do not wander, nor have wandered continually for the last two or three thousand years or so, and have slapped up many supposedly permanent villages like London, New York, or Paris, the restless, ambitious rat took into his head not to limit himself to such dirty kind of work exclusively. He then formed the resolution, and further carried out the purposes of his creator by taking upon himself the philosophic office of keeping man's pride in check. This he did by literally chipping a large proportion of the gilt off man's earthy grandeur, and by destroying his works and belongings at every possible opportunity, with right hearty good-will and much perseverance. "Therefore," says a writer, "whatever man does, rat always takes a share in the proceedings. Whether it be building a ship, erecting a church, digging a grave, plowing a field, storing a pantry, taking a journey, or planting a distant colony, rat is sure to have something to do in the matter; man and his gear can no more get transplanted from place to place without him, than without the ghost in the wagon that 'flitted too'."
XV.—RATS IN THE GOOD OLD DAYS, AND THE MODERN RAT SUPERSTITIONS.
In the merry days of old, rats were regarded as undisputed signs of witchcraft, and even scholars acknowledged this—at least they were compelled to, by the help of a blazing pile of faggots, or similar mild means known only to the good old times. What caused this belief among the people was, that an animal appearing to them so small should be the cause of such intense and continual annoyance to them. There was no barrier through which the rat could not effect its way to get at a certain object, thanks to its wonderful powers of gnawing. It was so omnivorous, ferocious, and destructive, that the people endowed the rat with superhuman qualities, and regarded it as a true child of the Devil, put upon this earth to be always pestering them. In regard to the rat's superhuman qualities, it appears to have certainly displayed more reason and acuteness, fighting in the daily battle of life, than any one of these thick-skulled humans could lay claim to. It was looked on with a great and most unreasonable aversion and loathing, born of superstition and fear, and which we find vehemently expressed in all the ancient books on the subject. This feeling, we cannot help believing, is not dead yet, according to the astounding anecdotes brought forth and widely copied in a great many of our American newspapers. The facts and data given in these learned articles about the rat's size, weight, and habits, in general, would make his hair stand on end with horror if he were to read them. As a matter of fact, the ordinary brown rat, which we find everywhere near man, is a pretty black-eyed, softly robed, and delicately constructed little animal; and although his fur may be plainly colored, like the plumage of the sparrow amongst birds, yet it is of the finest texture, and, when possible, is always kept scrupulously clean. In solitary captivity he is continually sitting on his haunches, cleaning his fur like a cat; and the writer has found, by actual experiment, the weight of twelve full-grown, well-fed New York city rats to amount to exactly twelve and a half pounds.
Formerly, in European countries, there was a general belief in the existence of strange and mysterious relations between this great slimy monster and the high-priests of witchcraft and sorcery. It was thought that this was the animal best adapted to carry out the diabolical plots of his Satanic majesty. In one part of Norway, the peasants used devoutly to hold a fast day once a year, trusting thereby to get rid of the pests of rats and mice. They had a Latin exorcism which they used on these occasions, beginning with the words, "Exerciso nos pestiferos, vermes mures," etc. Anything a rat left its trace upon was an omen of ill to the owner; and when by any chance a rat was ever seen on a cow's back the poor animal was doomed to pine slowly to death in consequence. In Ireland it was believed that premises could be rid of rats by reciting a rhyme over their holes, which was commonly called "rhyming rats to death."