Rensselaer Journal, Volume 11, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 November 1901 — EXTERMINATING RATS. [ARTICLE]

EXTERMINATING RATS.

A Vigorous and Successful Campaign Against Rodents In Cape Town. If the,Pied Piper of Hamelin had not been filling an engagement elsewhere, he might have found remunerative employment recently in Cape Town, South Africa, where the authorities have been waging a war of extermination against the numerous rats. Thest rats, according to the New York Press were responsible chiefly for spreading the bubonic plague throughout the region and thus gained the enmity of all classes. Hence in the war of extermination a reward of threepence a head was offered for each rat that should bs proven to have suffered the extrems penalty of the law—whether guilty oi not—of having introduced buboni< plague during the course of its enterprising but till too brief career mattered not. It sufficed that the gravt crime of bringing the plague from ths stricken ports of India into South Africa had been fixed on the rats thal came over in transports. The result of this was that so vigorous and successful a campaign has been carried out in Cape Town that it Is at this mo. ment practically ratless—save for fresi arrivals, which are summarily dealt with. During the early stages of thii minor war the rat-receiving office or the docks was besieged by huge numbers of bloodthirsty human conqueron every day, but in the later stages thi siege relaxed so much owing to th« growing scarcity of rats that the pol! tax had to be raised to sixpence. A* soon jls these rats were received and paid for they were taken to a Bmall hut near the sea and consigned tc flames lasting as long as there was ral fuel to feed them.