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Household and Garden Pests: Rats

RATS AND MICE To Destroy Rats and Mice.-Methods recommended for destroying rats and mice may be summed up as the use of poisons, traps, ferrets, fumigation, and the rat-proof construction of buildings. In addition, a bacteriological product has been discovered by the Pasteur Institute which communicates to rats and mice an infectious disease, not dangerous to man or other animals, by which they are completely exterminated. The loss to the United States from the brown or Norway rat alone is said to amount to several million dollars a year. These animals also spread the germs of infectious disease from house to house, and the bubonic plague or "black death" from city to city. An exhaustive list of the destructive agencies employed against rats and mice in historic times would more than fill this volume; but most of them are worthless, and only a limited number are necessary.

To Poison Rats. - Mix to a stiff dough 1 part of barium (carbonate of barytes) with 4 parts of corn meal, or 1 part of the barytes with 7 parts of water.

Or spread barytes on moistened bread and butter or toast. Scatter these preparations in small quantities in the rat runs. This poison is without taste or smell, and in the small quantities that suffice to poison rats or mice is harmless to domestic animals. It acts slowly, and the animals before dying will, if possible, leave the premises in search of water. Hence this is the safest poison to employ in dwellings. All receptacles containing water must be covered while this or any other poison is in use, and care must be taken that there are no leaky pipes or pools of water on or near the premises.