CHAPTER VI.

      DIETETICS OF RATS.

      WE now come to that part of Ratology which most concerns the interests and well-being of the human family, namely, the rat’s stomach.

      Of all animal stomachs I believe the rat to possess the most astounding and convenient one; for it can adapt the intestines to every kind of digestible substance that chance or locality produces. Rats will eat all kinds of grain or farinaceous food, from a sago or tapioca pudding, hot or cold, with or without sauce, down to horse-beans, peas, or coarsest barley or pea meal, including all kinds of pastry, from the choicest cheese-cakes or custards down to the commonest hot or cold cross-bun or sailor’s biscuit.

      As for fish, rats have no mercy on them. They will eat all kinds of small fry, heads, tails, bodies, bowels, bones and all, from the delicate whitebait or smelt down to the rusty red-herring of Scotland. Indeed, nothing comes amiss to them, from the whale to the shrimp. Hence arises the cause of their locating, during the summer months, at the water-side.

      In the “Sporting Magazine” there is a grave series of charges brought by a gentleman against rats for their depredations among corn, game, and fish. In speaking of the last, he says: “There is another and most serious evil occasioned by rats; that is, the destruction of fish in streams, pools, and stews, where fish are preserved.” He says few persons have any notion of the quantity of rats that frequent these places. He does not mean the more innocent, brown, short-eared, small, bright-eyed, and pretty-looking water-vole, but the coarse, fierce, grey when old, Norway, farmer’s rat, the frequenter of houses, buildings, ricks, hedges, plantations, brooks, pools, and every place under the heavens; while the vole, neither in winter nor summer, ever deserts the water, but on a summer’s evening may be seen quietly seated by the side of the stream, munching the white root of the bulrush, of which it is particularly fond, and holding it up in its paws, squirrel-fashion, seems to enjoy its evening repast as much as an alderman does his whitebait dinner, if that were possible.

      The same writer furthermore states that the Norway rat, in the summer months, frequents the water, and will attack a large fish in shoal water, and soon master it. Besides, he has known them come out of their holes, and carry away six or seven fine perch, which had been caught and left by the pool side, with the greatest ease:—

      “Some time ago my son had just returned from a day’s angling at Hanwell. The fish lay sparkling on a dish for my approbation. He had caught ten, but he informs me that the first three he caught were by far the finest; and in order to have them safe, he threw them on to the grass some few yards behind where he stood; then, after standing for some time quietly watching his float, he casually turned his head, and there were two large rats running away with two of his fish. He directly dropped his rod and pursued them, but they reached the water before him, and dashed in, taking the fish with them, and instantly disappeared. He supposes that one rat first found them, and taking away a fish to his hole, brought his companion to help him with the other two, and so the three finest fish were lost.”

      A gentleman was walking alongside a millstream near Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and noticed a common house-rat making its way close by the edge of the water, among the coarse stones that form the embankment. Curious to know what it could be doing there, he watched its progress downwards, until it reached the outlet of a drain. It had scarcely turned into the drain when it made a sudden plunge into the water, and almost as quickly reappeared in the stream with a middle-sized eel in its mouth. It made for the edge, where it regained its footing, and this, from the steepness of the bank, was a matter of great difficulty, which was much increased by the struggles of the eel to get free. Eels at any time, as every angler knows, are troublesome gentry, and very hard to manage; consequently would require all the ingenuity of a rat to cast a knot on one’s tail. But when the rat attempted to get forward, and turn a corner where there was a broader ledge, the desperate efforts of the eel rendered his footing so precarious that, rather than have a second plunge for it, he was reluctantly obliged to drop it into the water. His first action afterwards was to give himself a good shaking, both to revive his spirits and to rid his coat from the effects of his morning dip; and then, as before, he resumed his fishing recreation till he got out of sight,—the stream preventing the observer from following him further.

      As some labourers were cutting through an embankment in a field adjoining the river Lune, they met with between fifteen and twenty pounds’ weight of eels, some quite fresh, and others in the last stage of putrefaction. They varied from a quarter to half a pound each, and consisted of the common silver-bellied or river eel, and Liliputian specimens of the conger or sea eel. The latter of course had come up with the tide. As teeth-marks were visible on the heads of most of them, it was conjectured they had been destroyed in that way and stored for winter provisions by some animal whose retreat was not far distant. This proved to be the case, for, on digging a little farther, out bounced a matronly rat with seven half-grown young ones at her heels. The workmen gave chase, and ultimately succeeded in killing both mother and young ones. The embankment is about a hundred yards from the water’s edge; so that it must have cost considerable time and labour on the part of old Ratty to catch and drag the eels thither.

      Rats swarm about the small towns in Scotland where the herrings are cured, living amongst the stones of the harbours and rocks on the shores, and issuing out in great numbers, towards nightfall, to feed on the stinking remains of the fish. At the end of the fishing season they may be seen migrating from these places in compact bodies, and in immense numbers. They then spread themselves, like an invading host, among the farms, farm-houses, and stack-yards in the neighbourhood. They again repair to the coast for the benefit of a fish diet and sea air; their wonderful instinct telling them that the fishing season has again commenced.

      In the fish-markets of London, and also in the lower order of streets, where fishwomen are in the habit of standing, rats have from time to time been seen issuing forth, after midnight, to eat up the heads and entrails of fish, which the day’s sale had left. Thus before scavengers were introduced, they were of infinite benefit, though their services are now no longer required for that purpose. But about slaughter-houses, knackers’ yards, victualling depôts, drains, &c., their capacious stomachs are still of inestimable value to the population, by consuming all kinds of animal and vegetable refuse, that would otherwise be left in the drains to putrefy, to the great danger of the public health. As to animal substances, rats will gloat over and devour anything, from a delicate chop of house-fed lamb, or babies’ fingers, down to a venison pasty, an old tortoise, or putrid carrion. But with respect to poultry and game of every description, nothing dead or alive, either on water or land, is safe from their rapacity. They will eat anything, from the delicate wing of a roast duckling, young partridge or pheasant, down to the scaly old leg of a centenarian swan. They will likewise consume all kinds of oils and fatty substances, from the purest olive oil to the refuse of whale’s blubber. Nor will they object to soaps, either yellow or mottled, tallow fresh or stale; nor are they very particular, in times of need, as to boots and shoes, or horses’ harness. They will also consume all kinds of tuberous or bulbous roots, from a prize tulip to a mangel-wurzel. I have read also of their getting into churchyards, and eating our departed friends in their graves, as well as infesting the dead-houses on the Continent, where the bodies of strangers or casual dead are taken, for the purpose of being owned and claimed by their friends; but frequently, in a single night, their faces and portions of their bodies have been so completely eaten away by rats, that all traces of identity were