Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 65, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 March 1915 — HAPPENINGS in the CITIES [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

HAPPENINGS in the CITIES

Pittsburgh Firemen Have Trouble With “Varmints” PITTSBURGH— North side firemen are having their troubles with river crabs, leeches, rats and other such pests. The rats are especially bold and pestiferous about old Allegheny city hall, the engine houses and patrol

stations. The fire alarm office oh the third floor of old Allegheny city hall has a tribe of rats Which the operators there declare are the boldest rodents they ever had with. One old rat, the operators say, has a strong liking for soap and carries off every cake of that necessary article for cleanliness that is left in the bathroom. “We have set all sorts of traps for that rat,” said Operator Heer, “and left the most tempting of

poisoned baits for him but he actually laughs at our attempts to catch or poison him. Pinkerton, who has the night turn here, says the rats gambol all around him nightly. He says an old rat brought her whole litter of young into the operating room last night and 'put the litter through a regular gymnastic turn.” The firemen at No. 43 engine house say they can’t keep an egg overnight there because of the raids of the rats. The firemen say the rats carry the eggs off to their nests without breaking them. They kept watch over a basket of eggs set on a high shelf one night' and saw an old gray rodent steal an egg from the basket, carry the egg to the edge of the shelf in its front legs, then drop on its back to the floor in such a manner as not to break the egg, and scamper away on three legs to its hole, deftly holding its plunder with one front paw. One night recently when the firemen of No. 46 engine company reached the Hack residence fire in Sherman avenue they found they could get no water through one of the nozzles, although there was nothing wrong with the water supply. Unscrewing the nozzle from the hose they found a huge river crab in the noule. Operator Heer had an experience with a denizen of the North side water supply that gave him quite a fright. He was taking a bath in the fire alarm bathroom. When he was completing his bath a leech, four inches in length and hungry looking, came wiggling through the water at him. Heer gave a yell and leaped from the tub as though a tarantula were after him.