Rat-catchers
almost never work alone. Many hire apprentices or partners to help cover more
ground or to minimize the risk of injury during dangerous nocturnal work. Most
commonly, rat-catchers use trained (if not tamed) animals to more efficiently
track and corner unwelcome infestations.
Rats are
terrified of ferrets with good reason. Their long lean bodies slide through
tunnels and holes inaccessible to rat-catchers, and their sharp teeth kill rats
with a single bite to the neck. The strong scent of their natural predator is
often enough to scare rats into blindly running to safety. Ferreting should always be undertaken during
the day when the ferrets are alert and the rats snug in their dens.
Careful
breeding over hundreds of years makes game dogs, such as terriers, bull and
terriers, schnauzers, pinchers, and old English bulldogs, perfect rat
hunters. A dog’s smell finds unseen rats
and follows their underground tunnels from above. Hunting dogs chase down rats
too fast for the rat-catcher’s net or crafty enough to escape it. Small gutsy
dogs, especially terriers, follow rats into their burrows. Rat’s “lucky” enough
to survive a dog’s first bite, die soon after from a neck broken by vigorous
shaking held in the dog's teeth. All dogs used by a rat-catcher must have a
license.
Aided by
these natural abilities and instincts, the stratagems of rat-catchers reaches
new levels of cunning, ferocity, and brutality:
Hosts of
sewer rats climb up into homes through damaged drains or by eating through the
clay used to cover the joining of two differently-sized pipes. Hunting ferrets
released into the walls and foundation scares the majority back through the
water closets or drains through which they entered. The drains and pipes should
then be repaired and a few nights trapping catches any remaining rats.
When
hunting rats in rooms full of hiding places some rat-catchers spend a week
feeding the rats with oats or bread until they discover all the trails leading
to their holes in the walls and floor. On their first night of trapping, they
bring along two terriers. First the rat-catcher stuff rags into the rat holes
trapping the rats foraging in the room. Then the rat-catcher releases one dog
to hunt through the room startling uncovered rats into running for safety. The
remaining terrier intercepts the fleeing rats until all the vermin are dead or
caught.
When
ferreting in a large building with many floors, rat-catchers tackle the job one
floor at a time beginning at the top. The rat-catcher removes a floorboard at
one end of the room and covers the entire hole with a trapping net. On the
other side of the room, they pull up another floorboard and let the ferret
through. The rats, terrified of the ferret, dash through the opposite hole into
the net. Any rats remaining trapped under the floor can be scooped up by hand,
or with a net mounted on a pole. A professional, well equipped rat-catcher can
clear two floors a day using this methodology. Cayenne pepper or some other
scent repellent to rats liberally sprinkled prevents rats from migrating back
to floors already serviced.
When
clearing a barn or warehouse without an internal water source, rat catchers
search for the trail to water on which the rats habitually travel. After dark,
they cut off the rat’s escape by hanging a long net around the side or all of
the building. While the rats drink, the rat-catcher unleashes his dogs at near
the water sending the rats scurrying directly into his nets. The dogs catch any
remaining rats, and further rats on premises can be cleared by a couple of
nights trapping.
Adventure ideas
The
ferret’s love of stealing small items can lead to trouble. When a rat-catcher
returned his animals to their cages after a day of ferreting he found one
ferret clenching a strange bauble in its teeth. No one in the house claims it.
As if
this was not gruesome enough, we have even more distressing misuses of animals
next week. We’ll look at rat killing in Victorian sport next week.
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