Full Revelations of a Professional Rat-catcher After 25 Years' Experience

by Ike Matthews

Rats can exist a long time on herbage, if they can get nothing more palatable. It is

a very common thing to find Rats in the rabbit burrows when ferreting; in fact, I have seen, not once, but many times, Rats, rabbits, and weasels all bolt from the same burrow. I have also unearthed a Rat and a rabbit together out of one single burrow.

Now as to keeping Rats in store cages at home. Look well after them, and I think it is possible to keep them alive for quite a year; but if you keep, say, 20 in one store cage and neglect their feeding,, you will find that when hungry in the night they will kill the weakest of their number and eat it, sometimes even eating two or three in one night, leaving the skin as clean as if a man had skinned them. It is always the best plan to put the Rats in different cages, according to their sizes. The young ones together, the old ones together, and the middle-aged ones together, as they keep themselves much cleaner when thus divided, and do not fight so much as they would otherwise. They must also be kept in a warm place; if not, they soon have cramp. Also keep them in a dark place and see that they have plenty of water; sprinkle them now and then with it so that they will wash themselves. It is astonishing what a hungry Rat will do. I have seen them in the summer at dusk run at an old hen with her chickens under her,

and almost as quick as I tell it, the Rat has snatched a live chicken and run with it under a pigsty floor.

I have known them to take half-grown young ducks from the water side. I remember once ferreting round a pit, near a barn, and when I put my ferret in the hole, it pulled out two dead chickens and three middle-sized dead ducks, and behind them, not more than a yard deep in the pit bank, was an old Rat. I have also known them to get into the coops where a gamekeeper was rearing his pheasants, and to kill nine young ones in a single night all from under the same hen.

Rats are also fond of eggs. I have read of many ways in which Rats take eggs, but in my quarter-of-a-century’s experience of Ratting I never saw Rats take eggs save in one way, and that is, dragging or rolling them along the floor with their front paws, until they get them to the mouth of the hole. I remember one place where I was ferreting. There was an old cellar, the door of which at the top of the steps had to my knowledge been nailed up two or three years. Out of the hen house the Rats had eaten a hole at each side of the cellar door at the bottom. One day we burst open the door, went into the cellar (where it was impossible for a hen to get whilst the

door was closed) and beneath the bottom step we caught two Rats. On lifting the flag at the bottom of the steps, we found 15 whole eggs, some good and some bad, all of which I am quite satisfied the Rats had carried down those nine stone steps! How they had done so I cannot explain, but content myself with stating only the plain facts of my own personal observation.

Rats are also very cunning in the water, say a pit or a river. Now, a Rat can exist in water for at most about seven minutes, and you will find when a dog is swimming after a Rat that the Rat is watching the dog all the time, for as soon as the dog gets within a yard of the Rat the latter will dive under water and come to the surface again about 15 yards away. When the dog has tired the Rat out with swimming, you will very often see the Rat dive again and come up very quietly and just put its nose out of the water, or rest its head on a floating leaf. It is so cunning that it will remain still there, and if the leaf or reed gives way it will come up at the water side and just thrust out its nose to breathe. By this means the dog loses full scent of the Rat.

I have also noticed how useful are the Rat’s front paws and tail. I have seen a Rat on the top of a swill tub at a pigsty, when the

swill has been about ten inches from the top of the tub. The Rat was too cunning to jump down on the wet swill and drown, but I saw it reach as far down the inside of the tub as possible with its front paws and scrape the grease from around the sides! I have also seen the same Rat, when unable to scrape any further down the tub sides, turn round, clutch the top of the tub with its front paws, dip its tail into the swill, and then gain the top of the tub and commence licking its tail.