Word: ratting
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...professor works in a cluttered laboratory with a view of a garbage dump and its swarming rat and mouse population. The room is aflutter with canaries, which roost on the rungs of his chair and scatter when he moves. At night, while the professor works, the mice steal out of holes. Their feet patter like rain on the zinc-covered tables, and when one of them chews a seed stolen from the canaries, it makes, says the professor, "a very delicate noise." Cockroaches fade like ghosts in & out of cracks. The birds crane their necks and peer...
...will be his prestige in his party." Just the same, Labor Party leaders who knew they had to woo former Tories in order to stay in power were appalled by the Bevan outburst (see cut). On Bevan's Chelsea house someone painted: "Vermin Villa-home of a loudmouthed rat...
...Calhoun took a rat census of several adjoining blocks in Baltimore, and trapped and marked many of the native-son rats. Then he released 112 marked alien rats in the center of the middle block. At once there was social strife. Both native rats and aliens scurried around wildly, invading backyards where none had been seen before. Dogs and humans joined the fray. In the first 18 days there were 31 rat casualties...
...long-established rat community, says Dr. Calhoun, there is very little fighting. Every rat, having tested its strength against its neighbors, knows its social position and stays in it. Newcomers must battle for places in this set order. But since (like human immigrants) they do not know the new country, they are at a disadvantage. When danger threatens, they do not know where to hide. The newcomers do not know the best sources of food, and therefore lose weight and strength...
...native sons, familiar with local conditions, win most of the battles for position in the social order. They force the D.P.s in the rat colony to accept the least desirable territories, where they lead a marginal existence, exposed to hunger and enemies...