CHAPTER IX
FAREWELL TO THE RATS AND RABBITS
I got a little uneasy as the rats continued to grow, and to grow, and to grow. However, I reflected that they were not of pet stock. They were common sewer rats, and if they were a good size in the open, why should they not attain to a greater, here in this enclosure where they had not a care in the world, and had plenty of what must have been to them delectable food.
I had been accustomed to think of rats as dirty creatures, and was surprised to find how much they loved water, and with what determination they washed and brushed themselves each day. They were model pets in that respect, but I was disappointed to find that they did not grow tame and come about me. By this time they were enormous fellows, and at night I used to take a lantern and go into the aviary, and sit on a box and watch them. I wanted to love them. They were my pet rats. Why not grow as attached to them as to a dog or a cat? I could not. I would not let myself shudder as they passed to and fro near me, but I wanted to do so. They did not care particularly for me. I could see that in every movement of the big, sleek gray creatures, and they did not trust me. I felt badly to find that they were excavating a tunnel in the earth. I did not see them actually at it. They used to work on their fortifications at night, and every morning there would be a heap of earth piled up, with large stones too heavy for one rat to carry.
My father said that he would have liked immensely to see how they carried out those stones. I thought that this performance implied lack of confidence in me. What were the rats going to do there, and what did they expect me to do, that they deserted their shallow nest and made this underground cave? I did not know but what they had tunneled through to the street, but this fortunately they did not do. When the den was finished, they lined it, and retired to it, and I saw very little of them.
They might have been there to this day, if it had not been for the death of my robin, Dick, that I have already referred to. When I went into the aviary, and found that they had deliberately murdered a bird, when there was an abundance of food for them, I gave up my plan of reforming rats, and decided that as the fathers were, so will the children be, and they had better go back to the street.
The next morning my father went into the aviary with a workman, who carried a pick and shovel. Our two fox-terriers ran after them. Two rats escaped to the outer world, where I imagined them telling wonderful tales to their relatives of a basement where food and drink abounded, and where they had made a wheel spin round and round, and had tried to lead a good, respectable life, and had failed.
The fox-terriers pounced on the other five rats as they ran out from the snug home we found they had made by tunneling into an old French drain built alongside the house. I worried a little, thinking that perhaps they should all have been driven into the street, but have since found out more about rats, and accept the statement of many wise persons, who say that they carry disease germs, and should be exterminated. I would not torture them, but would kill them mercifully and speedily.
This common, grayish rat has had a remarkable history. Starting as far as we know from western China, he became a sailor rat, and has by means of ships gone all over the world, driving the black rat in terror before him.
The gray, or brown rat, as he is often called, will, in favorable situations, increase enormously, producing annually several litters, each of which may contain eight, ten, or even twelve or fourteen young ones.
Some years ago, the number of rats in the slaughter-houses about Paris was so great that as many as two and three thousand would be killed in a single night. However, they have friends. I have heard that in some mines the miners make great pets of rats, and are angry if any visitor brings his dog with him. The rats are the only creatures that willingly stay underground with the men, and beside acting as scavengers, their sharp eyes and ears are ever on the alert for slipping sand, or pebbles falling from the rocky roofs. They hear noises unperceived by the men, and previous to a caving-in, will run for the open air with wild squeals of terror. Small wonder that the miners protect them.