These voracious creatures assembled at this
spot in such numbers, that they devoured all the flesh (that was not
much, perhaps, in many cases) of twenty or thirty horses in one night,
so that in the morning nothing remained of these carcasses but bare
bones. In one of these slaughter-houses, which was inclosed by solid
walls, the carcasses of two or three horses were placed; and in the
night the workmen blocked up all the holes through which the rats went
in. When this was done, the workmen went inside with lighted torches and
heavy clubs, and killed two thousand six hundred and fifty rats. In four
such hunts, the numbers destroyed were upward of nine thousand. The rats
in this neighborhood made themselves burrows like rabbits; and to such
an extent was the building of these underground villages carried, that
the earth sometimes tumbled in, and revealed the astonishing work they
had been doing.
That is rather a tough story, but I guess we shall have to believe it.
It comes to us on the authority of Mr. Jesse, who, in his excellent work
on Natural History, is pretty careful to say nothing which cannot be
relied upon as true. As to the battle which those men had with the rats
in the slaughter-house, it must have been a desperate one. I should not
have fancied it much. I had a little experience in fighting with rats
once, when I was a boy. They were in a room occupied with meal and
flour.
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