Word: ratting
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Episode One: (a lonely Monday morning, 2 a.m., October 1987, Winthrop House dining hall). While working on a Statistics 100 problem set, I gradually wake up to the reality that a large, grey rat (about the size of a fat guinea pig) is peering down at me from the nearby Coke machine. After a near miss from a No. 2 pencil, the rat hastily scampers behind the machine and out of sight. Although I will probably never know whether the two events are connected, about a week or so after this encounter, the Winthrop House Coke machine...
...Norway rat (Rattus norvegicus), which pervades Boston and most American urban areas, is a formidable creature. It has gnawing teeth and jaw muscles that bite with the force of 12 tons per inch -- on a par with a shark. It will eat almost anything, and has been known to attack human babies. Some of the Boston rats have lived their entire lives underground, and no one knows how they will behave when exposed to the cultural opportunities of aboveground Boston...
...Bostonians need not despair. As the city and the state argue over just how the rat peril should be met, the state has hired William B. Jackson, the ultimate rat terminator, to deal with the problem. A former biology professor, Jackson, 62, now runs his own consulting business in Osseo, Mich., and is one of the nation's foremost experts on rodent control. Working for the United Nations, he has battled rats around the world, from Indonesia to Brazil. Billed by the Boston media as the "rat czar" and the "Pied Piper," Jackson is devising a strategy to save Boston...
...main tactic will be to hang poison paraffin blocks from manhole covers in the sewer system. He concedes, though, that he cannot reach other rat tunnels. "The dilemma is that it's not just the sewers," he says, "but a subterranean labyrinth of unknown dimensions." Besides baiting sewers, he will help owners of buildings near the construction create barriers against underground invasions and set traps for rats that venture aboveground. Vows Jackson: "We'll provide them hotel rooms they will never leave...
ENVIRONMENT: Boston girds for the great rat...