18 DAN BEARD'S ANIMAL BOOK 



ton were bitten by sewer rats, probably fatally, and 

 a little baby boy in Brooklyn, four months old, 

 had his finger badly chewed before his mother 

 could rescue him. Instances are not wanting 

 of full grown men being bitten while asleep or 

 even attacked while awake by rats. 



A man in Washington who attempted to sleep 

 in a cellar, only escaped from the hungry rodents 

 after he had received more than a hundred wounds. 



A man in Philadelphia entered a brewer's grain 

 pit and before he could be rescued from the rats 

 his body was covered with bloody wounds. 



A farmer's boy of East Berlin, Pennsylvania, 

 uncovered a lot of rats while tearing up the barn 

 floor, and although he succeeded in killing a dozen 

 or more, the rats made a fierce fight, and when 

 friends found the boy he was unconscious from loss 

 of blood. 



A policeman in New York was badly bitten on 

 the leg by a big sewer rat which he attempted to 

 hit with his club. 



A man in Brooklyn made a kick at a rat he saw 

 running across the sidewalk, and when the ugly 

 creature fastened its teeth in his leg he learned to 

 his sorrow that rats will sometimes fight. The 

 newspapers of the day have frequent accounts of 

 rats fatally or seriously wounding human beings 

 and, after making due allowance for the "en- 

 thusiasm" of reporters, there will be still sufficient 

 evidence to rank the rat among dangerous animals 

 and to induce us to use due caution when forced 



