THE DISASTROUS RAT
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Rats, besides being a great menace to health as carrier.; of disease, do, with mice and voles, an appalling amount of damage, running into millions of pounds, to buildings, embankments, food, merchandise, crops and other property. This is not sufficiently realised.
The usual methods of destroying them, by poisoning, gassing, flooding, stopping, trapping, &c., are expensive, dangerous, slow, or otherwise unsatisfactory. The places of those killed also are quickly filled again by new arrivals. May I therefore call attention to Nature's check against their abnormal increase, namely the owl ? One of -these birds has been known to kill as many as thirty rats in one night and t" drive many others away. A nestling owlet has been seen to swallow nine mice, one after the other, and in three hours' time to be clamouring for more ! The mere presence of an owl will keep rodents away. I know of a tree in a garden in the centre of a town well supplied with rats and mice : in the tree lives an owl and, although poultry are kept close to, there is, within a large radius, not a single rat or mouse to be seen.
It is suggested that, instead of being shot, owls should 1.4
bred and established in every park, large garden, among rafters in barns, mills,. storehouses, or wherever else they are required. Rats, mice and other night pests would then give
little trouble.—Yours faithfully, P. G. TILLARD.
Eastbourne.
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