Word: ratting
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...female rat is capable of breeding at four months, and usually produces four litters, each of six or more young, in her reproductive year. If all lived, one pair would have millions of descendants in two or three years, but the attrition is high enough to keep the numbers fairly constant. Estimates of the U.S. rat population (largely guesswork) range from 90 million to 100 million, or about half as many rats as people. For New York City, the estimates run as high as 8,000,000, or one rat per person. The U.S. Department of the Interior figures that...
...rat's most distinctive contribution to human ill health comes from its bite. There are credible stories of men, exhausted and sleeping, or trapped in a mine shaft, being bitten to death by rats. Far more common today is the case of the city mother, awakened by a cry in the middle of the night, who finds her infant in his crib bleeding from rat bites on the nose, lips or ears. The rat usually flees on her approach and escapes. The child may suffer from either of two types of rat-bite fever or from many common infections...
...Since rats will eat anything, they should be easy to poison. But they are not. Psychologists explain that rats have two contradictory traits: along with a willingness to sample anything potable or edible, they have a deep suspicion of whatever is new. So exterminators give the rats time to get used to the sight and smell of their traps and baits before they expect results. Dogs and cats, despite their reputation, are not very effective as rat exterminators...
Arsenic, strychnine, phosphorus and thallium salts are effective rat poisons, but far too dangerous where there are children or pets. Probably the oldest of rat poisons is about the most effective and also the safest: red squill, from the ground root of a European plant. Mixed with freshly ground meat or fish baits, it is harmless to children, cats, dogs and even squirrels...
Perhaps still more potent, and still relatively safe, is the anticoagulant drug warfarin. Less than 1/500th of an ounce is enough to make an adult rat die of internal bleeding. Ironically, the brown rats' white kin in laboratories helped University of Wisconsin researchers develop warfarin anticoagulants as lifesavers for men and killers for rats...