No. 4.] RATS AND RAT RIDDANCE. 203 



menced. Having to attend to my studies, saw and split the 

 winter's wood, do the chores in house and barn, and some cook- 

 ing, churning, etc., I might have been considered fairly busy for 

 a boy of fifteen, as boys go nowadays, but the rat catching de- 

 volved upon me and was my only pastime. There was but one 

 trap, a rusty steel concern, used for woodchucks, but numbers 

 of deadfalls and other contrivances, including mouse traps, were 

 fashioned by candlelight and firelight, and from cellar to garret 

 and from pigpen to haymow the number of destructive con- 

 traptions grew apace. 



Pantry and grain bin were closed securely to starve out the 

 rats and drive them to the traps, where a variety of bait was 

 offered, but they still found some food about the barn, pigpen 

 and henhouse. Soon, nevertheless, we were awakened at night, 

 not by rats running over our faces, but by the bang of deadfalls 

 loaded with bricks as the unsuspecting victims were crushed 

 beneath them. At the end of the second month neither rat nor 

 mouse, nor a sign of either, could be found about the house or 

 any of the farm buildings. Thus I learned by observation and 

 experience that it was possible to rid the farm of rats by traps 

 alone, by taking a little time every evening for trapping. 

 Patient, persistent trapping succeeded where cats had failed 

 utterly, and no particular pains were taken to disguise or con- 

 ceal the traps. 



It is not always so easy to trap the rats on a farm as it was 

 in this case, and some city rats are not so unsophisticated as 

 were their country cousins in those days, but with conditions 

 made right, traps may be used with great success. 



The ingenuity of man having been exercised for many years 

 in inventing rat traps, numerous designs have been perfected, 

 most of which are effective, — if the rats can be enticed into 

 them. "There is the rub." Box traps open at one end or 

 both ends, figure 4 traps, and many others of the deadfall 

 type, steel traps and gins, tin box traps, wire cage traps, traps 

 with pitfalls and trap doors, traps with mirrors to entice the 

 foolish rat to his downfall, traps for drowning, guillotining, 

 hanging and electrocuting rats, torture traps, humane traps 

 and many others have been put on the market, but success 

 depends more upon the trapper than upon the trap. One man 



