Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 98, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 April 1910 — PARIS PLAGUE OF BATS. [ARTICLE]

PARIS PLAGUE OF BATS.

Ret nr n of' Rodente Finds Rat Catchers’ Guild Out of Business. In the days when Eugene Sue wrote Mb novels of the underworld of Paris the Rat Catchers' Guild formed a highly remunerative and active profession —so active. In fact, that the rodents gradually disappeared except, along the river front and were rarely found in cellars as high as those on the Montmartre when the new system of drains were Instituted. With the rising of the Seine, however, and the “hacking up” of the sewers, says a Paris letter, the animals came back to their old haunts and again took up their lairß in cellars and basements of houses, and at night could be seen scampering about the streets. Unfortunately Paris was quite unprepared for the invasion. The Rat Catchers’ Guild, whose members used to receive a handsome price for ridding a house of the peks and then sold their Skins to furriers, was no more. Only one rat catcher is left, an old man named Henri Dayve, who is the municipal rat catcher of the city of Paris. He alone is left, and he has no apprentices, for the calling is no longer lucrative, and so he finds himself suddenly lifted into notoriety by the new plague of rats as being the only rat catcher left in Paris. However, it seems that he Is setting to work bravely, but it is something awful for a great city to be attacked by a plague of rats and to possqss only one rat catcher, and h« not a Pied Piper of Hamelin.