Rat. Rats forsake a ship before a wreck, or a house about to fall.
They prepared
A rotten carcass of a boat; the very rats
Instinctively had quit it.
Shakespeare, The Tempest, act i. sc. 2 (1609).
If rats gnaw the furniture of a room, there will be a death in the family ere long.--Grose.
⁂ The bucklers at Lanuvium being gnawed by rats, presaged ill fortune, and the battle of Marses, fought soon after, confirmed the superstition.
The Romans said that to see a white rat was a certain presage of good luck.--Pliny, Natural History, viii. 57.
Raven. Ravens are ill-omened birds.
The hoarse night raven, trompe of doleful dreere.