MISCELLANEOUS DAMAGE. 29 



Damage to dwellings is even more serious. The decay of sills and 

 floors is often hastened by contact with wet soil brought up by rats. 

 Rats gnaw through lead pipes or wooden tanks to obtain water, and 

 sometimes before the leak is discovered, ceilings, wall decorations, 

 and floor coverings are flooded and practically ruined. All this is 

 waste of a tangible kind and a constant drain on the prosperity of 

 the people. 



MISCELLANEOUS DAMAGE. 



Like the muskrat, the common brown rat burrows into embank- 

 ments and dams, often causing extensive breaks attended with serious 

 loss. At State and National fish hatcheries rats cause much trouble 

 by burrowing into embankments and gnawing through wooden tanks. 



Rats often gnaw the hoofs of horses until the feet bleed. Several 

 keepers of livery stables and dealers in horses in Washington, D. C, 

 have had animals thus injured. Brushing the hoofs with dilute car- 

 bolic acid is a preventive. 



Rats have been known to kill young lambs and pigs and to attack 

 very fat hogs and eat holes in their bodies, causing death. Farrow- 

 ing sows have been killed by rats gnawing their teats until blood 

 poisoning resulted. a In a similar way, they sometimes attack the 

 ears of pigs and shoats and cause their death by the gradual blood- 

 letting. 



Many accounts of rats attacking human beings have been published. 

 The modern newspaper reporter seems to delight in harrowing tales 

 of this character, most of which are the product of fertile imagina- 

 tion. Rats will fight if closely cornered or made desperate by lack 

 of food, but many persons already have an unreasoning fear of the 

 animals, which ought not to be intensified by exaggeration. 



Rats often carry away valuable articles to use in constructing their 

 nests. The following were found in a single nest: Three bed-room 

 towels, 2 serviettes, 5 dust cloths, 2 pairs linen knickerbockers, 6 

 linen pocket handkerchiefs, and 1 silk handkerchief. The same rat 

 had carried away and stored near its nest for food 1 J pounds sugar, a 

 pudding, a stalk of celery, a beet, carrots, turnips, and potatoes. 6 



Rats in London warehouses and on shipboard do much damage 

 to ivory in bulk. They gnaw the tusks, usually selecting the freshest 

 and most valuable specimens. 



A form of loss by rats once common on ships is not so prevalent 

 now, owing to the more common use of metal in the construction of 

 tanks and bulkheads. This was the perforation of wooden parti- 

 tions and the damaging of merchandise and ship stores by water. 



a Moline (111.) Evening Mail, April 25, 1904. 

 &The Field (London), vol. 77, p. 46, 1891. 



