Rats' Ingenious Escape
By Henry W. Warren
DO ANIMALS REASON? HOW ELSE DID RATS DO THIS? IN 1874-77 I lived in the parsonage of St. John's Church, in Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn. Suddenly the lower story and cellar were invaded by a small army of rats. After several preliminary skirmishes in which they suffered somewhat in killed and wounded, they took possession of the brick incasement of the furnace as a fort, through a passage made by one brick in the obscure back part being left out for circulation of air. They provisioned the fort with a peck of sweet potatoes, ready to stand siege or make depredatory excursions through the sally port. Discovering the situation, I slipped a brick into the aperture. I gleefully said, "In the morning I will come down, and make a Sedan for the whole army." They appreciated the situation as well as I, and communicated it to their fellow marauders outside. The cellar floor was perfectly cemented, except a little hole where the water pipe came up in a corner twelve feet diagonally away. Between those inside and outside they agreed on the following plan: Each party of sappers and miners should excavate a tunnel under the cement, and meet half way from the furnace inclosure and the water-pipe hole. This they did, and every last rat escaped, the dirt being about equally thrown out at each end. The engineers at the Mont Cenis tunnel did not make the French and Italian approaches meet exactly in the center. A traveler can feel the shunt of the car as he rides through. But these engineers communicated their thought, made their plan, did the work, and made no such blunder. Did they think?—Bishop Henry W. Warren.