rats!
this is a real book? why am i only learning of it now?! consider the following anecdote as a cautionary tale for the next time that you find yourself crawling under your floorboards with a your pet ferret hunting a bitch rat by candlelight:
I remember a private house where I was engaged catching rats under a floor with ferrets. I went as far as possible on my belly under the floor with two candles in my hands, and I saw the ferret kill a large bitch rat, about six yards from me against a wall, where neither the dog nor myself could get at it.
I finished the job and made out my bill for my services, but in about two or three weeks after they again sent for me, declaring they could not stay in the sitting-room on account of the smell that arose from beneath the flooring boards. They had in consequence to send for a joiner; and as I knew the exact spot where the rat was killed I ordered him to take up the floor boards just where the dead rat lay, and the stench that arose from the decomposed rodent was bad in the extreme. I disinfected the place, and I was never sent for again.
from full revelations of a professional rat-catcher by ike matthews (1898).
