Rats

Brown house rats grew desperate in the London Basin" district, last week, as heavy rains flooded their lairs with seepage and made sodden the nests of mother rats. Father rats shortly held a conclave, or, if they did not, the surprising event which proceeded to occur was all the less explicable. Simultaneously, the rats and ratlings poured up from their cellars by tens, scores & hundreds, to hurry, drab and sopping, out to the old Lea Valley Road toward high, unflooded Epping Forest. Pedestrians and cyclists on the road did not pause or hold their ground as the pattering squealing rats approached. Frightened they retreated into neighboring fields and circumstancially related afterwards that the rats were led by an immense bull-rodent--his eyes (aa^ording to one gifted witness) "rea land glaring." While dogs bayed, horses bolted whinnying, and even motor cars were turned around for flight, the rats scurried on--turning the road into an undulant brown snake. At last the snake reached Epping Forest, slithered in, dissolved into rat-families which fought and clawed each other for the better nesting places. Shocked squirrels looked on, chattering .... Next morning outraged humans came with guns. Men-children helped their fathers to dispatch the rats. Dogs recovered courage and scented out lairs into which lethal gas was pumped,. Romanticists hoped that the great, "glaring-eyed" bull-rat escaped.