No. 4.] RATS AND RAT RIDDANCE. 223 



are likely to vomit into the liquid, thus poisoning water, milk, 

 beer and other beverages. If there is no other water they will 

 climb or fall into open wells, which endangers the health if 

 not the life of people who partake of water from such wells. 

 If there is nothing for them to drink in the building they will 

 get out of doors if possible, and take dew, snow or water from 

 drains, etc. Rats are very resistant to some poisons and not 

 many are found dead after poison has been used. I have found 

 a few dead in such cases near or in water, sometimes many 

 rods from the place where they were poisoned. The dying also 



4M f 





Poisons are impartial. 



retire to holes in the ground. Rats sometimes carry poisoned 

 food about, leaving it where birds, poultry, dogs or cats can 

 get it. 



The use of traps will show definite results, but in the use of 

 poisons the exact effect cannot be determined. When poisons 

 are used on confined rats the results can be seen; but rats con- 

 fined with poisoned food must eat it or starve, as they can get 

 nothing else and cannot go elsewhere to feed. When poisoned 

 food is put out for free rats some may be found dead, others 

 may die in their holes. It is impossible to gauge the amount 

 of poison that any rat may take. One may take just enough 

 and die, another may take too much, which acts like an emetic, 

 and the experience may or may not drive the rat to other 

 quarters. Another may leave in search of water and never 

 come back, or, finding water at hand, it may die in a wall or 

 under a floor of a building, with the usual disagreeable con- 

 sequences. Others may not touch the poisoned food, while 

 still others may take just enough to warn them, but not 

 enough to be fatal. 



Certain proprietary poisons are advertised to embalm rats 

 or dry them up. Of others it is said that the rats "don't die 

 in the house." It is almost needless to say that these claims 

 have very little foundation in fact. There is no poison known 

 which a rat can eat and retain enough of to embalm its carcass, 



