Labour-saving Note of the Day, 1924

[mme_hardy]

 854.  How to Discover a Dead Rat.  To locate a dead rat in a room catch half-a-dozen blue bottle flies and slip them into a glass jar.  Let the flies out in the room where you suspect the rat is and sit down whilst they fly round.   Within an hour they will have scented the rat and all be buzzing round one spot.   That is where your rat is.  You can then take up the board and remove the pest.

 

Ah, our close-to-the-earth ancestors.   How natural they were, with their simple homely remedies.

Comments

[movingfinger]

I am sure a terrier could also be used for the same.

[ironed_orchid]

This tends to be more of an issue if you use poison.

If you use cats as your method of pest control, you are far more likely to find the rat in the doorway to your bedroom, or in your shower cubicle. If you have a really good cat, you may only ever see the rats' tails.

[legionseagle]

Incidentally, I'm fairly certain that your last line appears, almost word for word, in Jerome K Jerome's Three Men in Boat (published 1889) showing that certain habits of mind - and the desire to satirise them where they appear - are almost timeless.

[sara]

Is #853 how to catch half a dozen blue bottle flies and get them all into a jar? Because I would like instruction on THAT.