Consider the Rat 



The most destructive mammal that lives with man.. It 

 costs $200,000,000 to keep our rat population every year 



By Fred Telford 



RATS probably destroy more property 

 than any other mammal. They are 

 a luxury hard to support. A little 

 incident reported by Edward Howe For- 

 bush, Massachusetts state ornithologist, in 

 his booklet "Rats and Rat Riddance," il- 

 lustrates the prevailing ignorance . with 

 regard to the depredations of this un- 

 conscionable pest. 



A grocer in a Massachusetts town com- 

 plained to his landlord of the injury to his 

 stock caused by rats, and asked to have 

 the building made rat-proof. As this in- 

 volved considerable changes, 

 the landlord proposed that he 

 pay the amount of the dam- 

 ages instead. When he was 

 presented with a bill for $25 

 at the end of the first month, 

 however, he refused to believe 

 that the damage was really so 

 great until shown the ruined 

 goods. Then he decided it 

 was cheaper to make the 

 building rat-proof. When 

 this was done and the rats in 

 the building destroyed by 

 phosphorus, the depredations 

 ceased. 



Just at present the damage 

 done by rats is particularly 

 serious because their principal 

 food is grain and grain prod- 

 ucts. Corn is eaten both in 

 the field in the shock, and in 

 the crib. Wheat if not ac- 

 tually consumed is rendered 

 unfit for the table or manger 

 farmer had such a numerous colony of rats 

 that they destroyed one-fourth of the corn 

 in two cribs containing two thousand 

 bushels. He killed as many as one hundred 

 and fifty rats a day. 



The rat population of farms of all kinds 

 where grain for food is abundant is nothing 

 less than startling. An Illinois farmer killed 

 3,435 rats on his farm, while on two Georgia 

 rice plantations it was estimated 

 that forty-seven thousand rats were 

 killed during the spring and summer 

 of one year. A rat hunt in Ohio, 

 with sides chosen, yielded over eight 



916 



Wires from which the insula- 

 tion has been gnawed by rats 



An Iowa 



thousand rats. Many ships also have a 

 big rat population; when the steamer 

 Minnehaha was fumigated at London some 



years ago seventeen hundred 



rats were killed. 



100,000,000 Is Our Rat 

 Population 



The most reliable estimates 

 of our rat population are 

 based upon the figures ob- 

 tained in the rat-killing cam- 

 paigns instituted when the 

 bubonic plague, a rat-borne 

 disease, invaded the United 

 States a few years ago. In 

 the first four months of the 

 campaign about 130,000 rats 

 were killed in San Francisco; 

 up to May, 1908, 278,000 

 were actually captured, and 

 probably 500,000 poisoned. 

 The most careful estimates 

 place our rat population at 

 100,000,000, or about a rat 

 per person. 



The direct cost of main- 

 taining this enormous rat 

 population mounts into large 

 figures. David E. Lantz, 

 assistant biologist for the United States 

 department of Agriculture, several years 

 ago estimated that the cost of feeding a 

 rat on grain was from 60 cents to $2 a 



A few examples of the 

 rat's costly depredations 



