[Narrator:] The following program is brought to you in living color by NBC.
[Music]
[Baby tosses and turns while crying in his crib.]
[Mother:] Okay, Okay!
Here's your bottle.
[Rat scampers around on the floor while baby is being fed.]
[Baby crying.]
[Woman runs out of the house screaming.]
[Narrator:] Not a pretty sight is it?
No, rat bites never are.
But treating rat bites, or all the diseases rats cause is one thing,
preventing them is another.
That's where I come in.
I'm Jeff Gannon.
My job, Director of Rat Control for the city health department.
At least that's my official title.
Mostly, people simply call me the rat man.
That's Joe Barnes just leaving.
He's new on the job, but turning into a good rat man himself.
And so is George Wilson there.
Sometimes George and I work together, most times we don't, but either way he's tops.
Been at it twenty years.
[George:] Another rat bite, Jeff?
[Jeff:] A baby again.
Mercy Hospital.
Multiple bites on the face and hands.
It shouldn't bother me after five or six years...but, it should never happen.
[George:] Don't let it get you down.
Think of all the cases that don't happen because you're in their pitching.
[Narrator:] Well, as usual our work was waiting.
All cases of one kind or another that we have to investigate before we can send a crew out.
Where?
Most everywhere.
We get the word from hospitals or the police, from homeowners, store owners, or tenants,
anybody who calls in for just one reason.
He's got rats.
[Young lady:] No sir, my mother wasn't home when the baby got bit.
She works and I keep the baby.
[Jeff:] But if you were with the baby, how come?
[Young lady:] I mean, I just gave her a bottle.
There's nothing wrong with that, is there?
I can't watch her every minute.
[Neighbor:] You know mister, the kids around here don't care.
They don't care one bit.
Did you hear about all those rats?
Well, we sure got 'em around here.
[Jeff:] I can see that, and apparently the kids aren't the only ones who don't care.
[Narrator:] And that suits the rats just fine.
Listen to the rat man, all they want is a place to live.
A messy place, where they can gnaw their way through doors or loose screens
or jump right in through broken windows, holes around pipes or in the walls.
Just enough room for a runway between their food and their shelter.
A place to bore into the ground and come up inside a building.
Enough rubbish to build their nests and have another litter in less than a month.
And what they want most of all is enough to eat.
There's an old saying in my business "If you're feeding 'em, they're your rats."
They'll eat most anything too.
Even spoiled food that would make people sick.
For them, garbage is a well-balanced diet.
And the closer that food is, the better.
Rats don't like to travel far.
Or in the open.
Or in the daytime.
Too dangerous.
Just grab it quickly and then hide.
That's the way they want it.
Rats are smart.
[Jeff:] Okay ma'am I'll notify the owners, and then get a crew out here to set up poison
bait
and try doing some ratproofing.
Meanwhile, you folks in the neighborhood better start cleaning up.
Or else these rats will be hanging around on the streets.
[Woman:] Well I don't know, it sure ain't going to be easy but we'll try.
You know, they've always lived here and probably always will.
[Narrator:] Sure, they've always lived here, and why not?
Almost like ringing the dinner bell for every rat in town.
Exactly what they need and want to set up housekeeping.
Rats go through the drums for you.
Too big for the city to handle, no lids.
Shouldn't be used for garbage in the first place.
[Resident:] Something the matter, rat man?
[Jeff:] Yes.
That's a real mess you've got there.
Why don't you get good cans, with lids.
[Resident:] Not my problem, I just live here.
[Jeff:] Sure you just live here, you and the rats.
[Manager:] Rats?
Heck yeah, we got rats.
Man it's like I told you, I'm not the owner. I'm just the manager.
Besides, ain't nothing I can do.
[Jeff:] Mister, I've given you two warning notices, now you get a penalty ticket.
Once the owner pays the fine in court, you can bet he'll tell you to start acting like
a real manager.
[Restaurant Owner:] Look, I don't want rats in my restaurant.
You think I'm crazy?
If the city would do its job I wouldn't have 'em.
[Jeff:] The city does what it can, but the citizen is in this thing, too.
We can't keep house for you.
[Resident 2:] This used to be a good place to live.
Look at it now.
Before these ole rats started coming around.
[Jeff:] Don't blame the rats lady, don't blame anybody.
Just keep in mind that it takes a bit of effort on everyone's part to keep a neighborhood
clean and neat so you won't have rats.
[Narrator:] Oh yes, there are thousands of rat bite cases every year.
Most of them infants with food on their faces after eating.
Or, older persons.
If we get them promptly to treatment, most wounds usually heal satisfactorily.
Unfortunately, many victims also suffer from the agony and pain of rat-bite fever.
[Jeff:] Biological warfare, rats versus people.
You betting on the people, George?
[George:] Sure, just the same as you are.
Just like you say, war is everybody's business.
It has to be.
That's why more of 'em have got to join up.
[Jeff:] Right, and if cats were the rat- catchers people think they are,
we wouldn't be mixing tons of poison bait, ratproofing buildings, or forever holding clinics.
[George:] Cats, dogs.
what's the difference?
They're not much better than traps really.
Like the butcher shop case.
Ahh, that was before your time, Jeff.
[George narrating:] It was over on the west side.
And the butcher used traps, and he caught a rat now and then...
so he figured he had the problem licked.
Most people do.
But man, the ones he didn't catch must have had a picnic every night.
Why, with all those scraps, it's a wonder he ever caught a rat in a trap.
This was all in the backroom, of course,
so the customers had no reason to suspect a thing.
Not then anyway.
Most people expect places that handle food to be clean as a whistle.
But they sure knew something was wrong when that food poisoning hit 'em.
And I mean them!
Men, women, kids.
Why that food was so contaminated from rat droppings left on his table,
that butcher could've poisoned a small army.
On top of losing his customers, he got a good case of lepto all on his own.
Probably from infected rat urine, and the mop water got right into his system.
Anyhow, he sure got the message.
[Jeff:] Leptospirosis huh?
Complete with chills, vomiting, muscular aches, that's pretty serious.
[George:] You better believe it.
[Dr. Lee:] I am Dr. C. Bruce Lee of the research and development office
of the Environmental Control Administration of the US Public Health Service.
We have with us today Mr. Harry B. Pratt, Chief of the Rodent Control Branch
of the Environmental Control Administration.
How are you, Mr. Pratt?
[Mr. Pratt:] Dr. Lee, it's a pleasure to be here today.
Uh, we plan to use this motion picture in many places throughout the country
where there is a rat problem.
But particularly in the twenty cities which are funded under the Partnership for Health program.
[Dr. Lee:] Could you tell us something, where these cities are located?
[Mr. Pratt:] Well as you can see on the map, these twenty cities are scattered from coast to coast.
Uh, including such very large cities as Chicago, Cleveland, New York, and Washington.
[Dr. Lee:] How much money is the federal government allocating
for this rat control program?
[Mr. Pratt:] Well, in the first year of operations, the federal government has spent about fifteen million dollars.
particularly in places like Chicago, New York, and Baltimore
where there are existing programs,
and in certain places like Atlanta and Nashville are where the money is used to start new programs.
[Dr. Lee:] Can you uh, tell us some information? Does the program cover an entire city?
[Mr. Pratt:] No.
Usually there's not enough money to cover an entire city,
so the work is concentrated for effective rat control in the low-income areas.
Quite often in the Model Cities or in the Model Neighborhood area.
[Dr. Lee:] Now that's interesting.
In these areas, who does the actual work on the program?
[Mr. Pratt:] Well, each program is planned and directed by trained engineers, biologists,
and sanitarians with broad experience in insect and rodent control work
and uh very frequently, years of work with the health department.
However, the majority of the workers are recruited from the inner city where the control work
is being carried out.
[Dr. Lee:] You mean to say that we have people working on the program
who have grammar school educations and who have been to high school?
Are they working on these activities?
[Mr. Pratt:] Yes, as you can see here, uh, some of these men are dropouts
or people who could not go further in school because of lack of money.
However, they can be trained to do very fine work in a number of types of jobs,
such as collecting rubbish.
Or they can be used to observe rat signs, as you see on the corner of this door here.
Uh, rats' teeth grow four or five inches a year and they can gnaw through many building materials,
even lead pipe with their sharp teeth.
Notice along the edge of this building, a rat runway.
Rats feel comfortable when they're using the same path day after day between their homes
and the source of food.
[Dr. Lee:] These signs are very interesting, of rats being about, but what else do the men
who are engaged in the program look for when they make an inspection?
[Mr. Pratt:] Well, of course the most important thing, we feel, is the checking
to see about refuse storage and garbage,
because garbage and refuse furnish the food and nesting material for the rat.
It's amazing how many garbage cans have no bottoms or tops.
There's no place for the bottomless or topless fad in refuse storage.
[Dr. Lee:] Well, since we have no place for the bottomless or topless fad in refuse storage,
what do the control workers do when they find garbage cans which are unsatisfactory?
[Mr. Pratt:] Well, of course the first thing they do is to come up and meet the householder
and try to get him to buy new garbage cans.
Uh they try to get rid of old appliances, old automobiles, places where rats
would hide in the backyard.
This is probably the most important thing that each householder can do,
is to have good refuse storage on his own property.
[Dr. Lee:] Well this is important to note, we must have good storage places
for refuse, on property.
Now, are rats confined to particular areas of the city?
[Mr. Pratt:] We can start in the sewers.
So these sewers, then, serve as a place where the rats can hide and they can travel.
And of course they can come up into some of our very best houses right through the floor
drains.
They can even crawl and swim through a toilet, into our basements.
[Dr. Lee:] Now that's most amazing and it's sort of chilling to think that even in my
own home...
[Mr. Pratt:] Right...
[Dr. Lee:] I could have a rat coming in by this means.
Uh of course I am interested in knowing what are the methods used for killing rats?
How do you go about killing them?
[Mr. Pratt:] Well of course, on the big city program we use three types of rodenticides,
that is, rat-killing chemicals.
We use uh, the anticoagulants, we use red squill, and we use zinc phosphide.
Now the anticoagulants are a chemical, which is mixed usually with yellow cornmeal.
This sort of thing here.
Now the rats must eat this for four or five days consecutively before their blood
begins to lose the ability to clot, or coagulate,
hence the name anticoagulant.
After this period of time, four or five days to a week or more, they become weak
and actually die painlessly from loss of blood.
Now there's a built-in safety factor.
If your child, for instance uh, should happen to eat this once, or your pet should eat this
once,
there's actually no danger from one feeding.
No sickness, no death.
It must be eaten four or five days in a row.
[Dr. Lee:] Well, it's good to know this, that there is this built-in safety factor
and I'm pleased because I do have children.
Now I'm concerned, what would I do if I found I had rats or mice about my house?
[Mr. Pratt:] Well, of course if you had rats, the best thing to use are these anticoagulants,
because of this built-in safety factor.
Now they can be bought and used in a yellow cornmeal mix, it's soft like this,
but it tends to blow, so a number of manufacturers have made it in a pellet form
which does not blow around nearly as much.
This comes probably in fifty or more different types of commercial formulations.
[Dr. Lee:] This is fascinating to see the uh, packaging in which these poisons come.
I remember as a child that they often said that a trap was best baited with a piece of
cheese
to tickle so a rat's nose, it almost makes them sneeze.
Now, is cheese the best bait to use for traps?
[Mr. Pratt:] Well of course most housewives feel that cheese is the best material to use
in baiting a mousetrap.
So it'll be done like this and of course you put the trap on hair-trigger.
But actually, we have found that you can get just as many mice or more with apples or peanut butter.
a nutmeat, or many other types of things that are in our houses, like bacon.
[Dr. Lee:] Well then, what do you do about rats in buildings, for instance?
[Mr. Pratt:] Well of course rats are much bigger, so we use essentially the same type
of snap-trap uh,
which we would set like this.
And uh you put your bait here and it would go like that.
On the other hand, if this is the wall now, like this, we can sometimes trap the rats
by having an expanded trigger of cardboard or metal as you see here.
And uh you've got to be very careful Dr. Lee,
because this is uh, something that could catch your finger very easily.
Now if this is the wall, we don't set the trap this way so that the rat comes in and
is thrown away.
We try to get it so that as the rat travels along the wall that way, why, it is caught
you see,
as it goes along the treadle.
Now, there's still another type of trap that we use that essentially is unbaited.
This is called a steel trap.
Now this one again, you can catch your finger in and have a real good little wound.
But if you use real caution and set it like this, and then you come under
and set it at hair-trigger,
remembering that one jaw of the trap is free, why then you can do it.
Now if this is, again, we don't set it this way so that if the rat runs along
it's thrown out, we set it this way.
Then as the rat comes along it's caught in the trap as you see there.
These, then, are some of the things that we do as we uh, try to get rid of rats and mice
in our houses.
[Dr. Lee:] I'm glad to have you the person who's demonstrating these traps on the, on
the program.
But what does all this mean to the average householder?
[Mr. Pratt:] Well of course to the average householder uh, this means that
rats are something that they should try to get rid of as quickly as possible.
Now let us look again at our motion picture and see a little bit more about the urban
rat problem.
[Footsteps]
[Mr. Barnes:] So the rat is a stealthy, clever enemy.
He can climb up wires and pipes,
squeeze through half-inch holes,
jump up and out three feet,
jump down and out eight feet.
Even drop fifty feet and still survive.
He starts fires,
destroys food and valuables,
contaminates even more,
and when you multiply the damage of a single rat by the rat population of the US,
about one rat for every two persons, the yearly loss skyrockets to more than a billion dollars.
So how do you change the picture?
By eliminating a rat here and there, not a chance.
You have to control the entire rat population and the first step is to eliminate the one
thing
that supports any population.
Food.
A single open garbage can for example, will support just so many rats, no more.
But add a few more messy cans,
then the mess of a city block,
plus that of an entire neighborhood,
and suddenly you're supporting a king- sized rat population.
[Jeff voiceover:] Amen, Mr. Barnes.
A lot of food, a lot of rats.
Less food, less rats.
No food, no rats.
Way I see it, most people are so close to their rat problem, they overlook the most
obvious solution.
Especially when they're blaming somebody else.
As always, it boils down to communication,
to telling him point-blank, "Look, if you want to get rid of your rats, quit feeding them.
Quit giving them hiding places.
Rats won't stay in an area where they can't get food and shelter.
So when you take it away, you take away the rats."
Here's the idea.
You see that?
It's a jumbo-sized, always-closed container
to handle a jumbo-sized garbage and rubbish problem.
And it does just that.
What's more, the city thinks it's great.
To me, most excuses are cover-ups for doing nothing.
But if anybody, a manager, owner, or tenant ever had reason to cover up,
it's right inside his garbage can or outside of it.
With just a bit of conscience, a bit of pride, and a bit of effort on everybody's part,
people can get rid of their rats, and they will,
if everyone keeps working at it.
[Jeff:] I mean that.
Every word of it.
There's no doubt that the rat problem is serious in every city, large or small.
We can't ignore it and we can't wish it away.
But we can do something about it.
Each one of us.
I'm betting on the people in this war on rats.
How about you?
[Truck engine revs]
[Dr. Lee:] Harry, your film says that the rat problem is serious in this country.
Just how serious is the urban rat problem.
[Mr. Pratt:] Well, every big city has a rat problem.
This varies of course with the age of the housing, with the condition of the housing,
and with the amount of food and harborage for rats.
Now, in the map that we showed you before, in the twenty cities where we examined,
we found about two thousand yards, out of twelve thousand carefully checked,
had signs of rats outside the home.
This is roughly one-sixth, or sixteen percent.
But even more important uh, sixty-one percent of the blocks in these cities had at least
one yard
with signs of exterior, rat signs outside the home.
[Dr. Lee:] Well these uh, statistics, the few that you've given us are most revealing,
and I was wondering does this, are these indications that give us any uh,
way of knowing what steps you're making in controlling uh rat, the rat problem?
[Mr. Pratt:] Well, we're making a rather sizable amount of advance success
in cutting down the number of rat bites and in cutting down the actual prevalence of rats
in these cities.
Uh for instance in New York City, the number of rats used to be reported so that there
were
six hundred cases of rat bites a year.
Then in a five-year period, from '63 to '67, uh it dropped down
to about five hundred and fifty.
In '68, there were only three hundred and ninety rat bites reported in greater New York.
And this year we only know about two hundred thus far.
[Dr. Lee:] Well, this does indicate that there is progress.
I can remember when I was a teacher many years ago, my children, when we were discussing rats,
showed me fingers, and noses, and ears that had been bitten by rats when they were babies.
This brought home to me the importance of control measures.
Now I realize that most of the film that we have seen today has demonstrated
the areas of town that you might say are poor, which are, where people who live, who don't
have opportunities;
however, rats are found everywhere,
as you said.
And one of the methods of control I assume is that we must get everybody to cooperate,
meaning the tenants, the residents, and the people who own the property.
It's got to be a...it seems to me, a broad attack involving everybody
who has anything to do with the environment in which rats are found.
Would you agree to this?
[Mr. Pratt:] I would think that this is very definitely true and that this very definitely
has a bearing on another significant part of the rat problem,
mainly about mental health and well-being.
You take children that are brought up in the inner-city uh, very frequently they grow up
wihtout being able to sleep at night because the rats are up in the ceiling
or they're gnawing in the walls.
There's a fear of rats and of these ugly, disfiguring scars.
And in some work that we've done it seems to us that uh, the rats uh, are probably
the number four cause of unrest and turmoil in the inner-city.
Uh, following such things as human relations, and poverty, and unemployment.
[Dr. Lee:] It's interesting to feel that an animal, a small animal which has traveled
with man from Asia
to our country, could be a definitive cause in unrest within our urban centers.
My first experience was reading Hans Zinsser's book, "Rats, Lice, and History."
This is a rather old book, but it is still pertinent.
It gives the history of man's reactions, his relationships to this pest, this neighbor
of man
who has followed without his asking man about the face of the earth from its origin in Asia.
And I am more than pleased to realize that the Environmental Control Administration
and Public Health Service has within it a program which is concerned with this rat control.
Are there, is there any information the viewers can secure concerning the uh,
control measures uh, the activities that are being undertaken in rat control.
[Mr. Pratt:] Of course we feel that this is a people problem
and that we must have the people behind us.
Now New York has done this, they have made this sign.
Seven things that every New Yorker should know about their neighbor.
And this brings home to them very clearly uh, that these are definitely in their homes.
We do a great deal of training with health departments all over the country
and we have recently produced this book:
Control of Domestic Rats and Mice,
which is available through the Government Printing Office.
Many health departments and other agencies are using this with pictures of rats
and uh trapping, of uh rodenticides and the refuse storage, all these things.
So go to your health department if you have a rat problem
and get advice from your health department.
[Dr. Lee:] Thank you so much for coming aboard to talk to us today, Harry.
It's a pleasure.
[Mr. Pratt:] My pleasure.
[Music]
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