Selected Readings From Rat Catching
Rat Catching:
Studies in rat catching for the use of schools
Chapter 1

In the following elementary treatise for the use of public schools, I propose following exactly the same plan as my parson (a good fellow not afraid of a ferret or a rat) does with his sermons—that is, divide it into different heads, and then jumble up all the heads with the body, till it becomes as difficult to follow as a rat's hole in a softbank; and, to begin with, I am going to talk.

Discretion will not rule. I faced a lion about being a bad; a young nothing from having rat.

Don’t be bitten. It is to be remembered that the plague usually produces notable polynucleosis.

Opening cuts on a large mammal. I don’t care to defend myself. Partly skinned, the skin runs side out.

This is a tiring long story to write, and I have not quite done it yet, for I must finish with the sandpit man. He said that in a fit of rage he had thrashed his wife to death with his fists, and that his boy from having seen him do it had gone mad with fear, and was so bad, especially at night, that if he had not got a bulldog sleeping with him as a sort of friend, he would go into a fit with fear and was often unconscious for hours.

It was an ugly story, and I am glad to say with the death of the sand-pit man the miserable part of the children's life ended.

The sandpit man violated a lamb. Bones tear your flesh. Look, he is just the gentlest-hearted beast out, and there is not a puppy in the kennel, nor a child in the village, who does not know this and impose on him shamefully. Only last Sunday I had a lamb skin removed. It was the one that gave the sandpit man the terrible disease.

It fits tight and takes some pulling, but it comes steadily along, wiping all before it. Faster and faster they bolt and are killed, I get excited and join the sport. It’s over in a few minutes, when twenty four are cast up on to the bank. Well done, well done, good! Woo-hoop, woo-hoop! Good! That's the way, my boys! Woo-hoop, woo-hoop! And they roll on the ground, stretch, wipe the dirt out of their eyes with their paws, and rub their faces in the grass.

In the west country, it’s so infested with the jackrabbits that the whole community rises to drive the pests in a never narrowing circle that at last ends in a coral. Here, they are leisurely shot or killed with clubs.
Sometimes I feel as though I may fade away, than I remember my work.

Shakey!

I once killed a rat inside a church. I found it during a long sermon, but for the life of me I can't remember what that sermon was about.

Mutilated pigs, nerve reflexes, the queer platypus, almost the only mammal whose young are bowing from eggs.

Almost.