Word: rat
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Sympathy of practicality for Readers Hooper and Page who are worrying with hogs on ice and barn rats. Let Readers Hooper and Page try to catch a "hog on ice" and they will have no need of book-lore to explain the expression. Deferentially and apologetically to Reader Hooper; the expression in the hinterlands is not "pert as a barn rat," but applies to sundry persons who are described as having "the cheek of a privy rat." The bucolic rhythm beats only in the backwoods...
...rat...
TIME, which seems to delight in an occasional salty phrase like that one, might like to be reminded of "as pert as a barn rat" which would be an ideal descriptive locution for Simone Simon, and not bad for some of Mussolini's poses. If you are asked to explain that one, I'll be glad to take it apart...
...Rats are not generally considered either popular or useful animals. But to scientists, who use them for biological and psychological experiments, they are both. In many laboratories, in which dozens of rats are kept in one cage, it is essential that they be marked in some way so that any one rat can quickly be singled out from all the other rats. Labels attached to the rats or marks painted on them are not entirely satisfactory. A more popular method is notching or perforating the ears according to a code. Another is cutting off various combinations of toes, or different...
...curator of physical anthropology at the Field Museum, had given a party with a friend at their Lake Shore Drive apartment. Guests, asked to bring live animals, turned up with a deodorized skunk, a singing duck, two colored baby chickens worn on a woman's hat, a white rat which bore a litter of ten during the party. Anthropologist Field's contributions: 1) a seal which he could not get into the freight elevator; 2) an un- housebroken, pregnant camel, whose nuisances were observed by tenants on the floor below...