Cockroaches Large As Mice

1920

Woman Catches Them With Mousetrap — May Try Cat.

TOPEKA, Kansas. — One Topeka housewife is offering a reward for some way to rid her house of cockroaches. She is wondering if any breed of cats will catch these pests. They have grown so large that she is catching them in mousetraps.

The other night she heard a suspicious noise in her kitchen. She set a trap. Next morning she found a cockroach which tried to steal the bait and met disaster. Thinking it was just a mistake on the part of the roach, she tried again, hoping to catch the mouse that had been keeping her awake.

The same thing happened, only the roach was twice as big — the size of a full-grown mouse.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Aug. 7, 1920, p. 4.

He Made a Study of Mice

1900

And Concludes That They Have a Keen Sense of Humor

Few people understand the mystery of mice. I think I can, without immodesty, claim to understand mice, for I have made them a study for many years. I used to think that nature supplied mice, wherever there seemed to any call for them. For example, if you live in a house where there are no mice and in a rash moment provide yourself with a mouse trap or set up a cat mice will immediately make their appearance. To the superficial observer this looks as if nature, perceiving that you have a mouse trap, proceeds to supply mice for it, or, noticing that you have a cat, sends mice enough to satisfy the animal. But this is not the true explanation. In order to understand mice you must grasp the fact that the mouse is an animal with a keen sense of humor and a love of excitement. With this key in your possession you can readily unlock the mystery of mice.

That the mouse has a sense of humor is conspicuously shown by the way in which he will rattle a newspaper in your bedroom at night. The mouse does not eat newspapers, nor does he put them to any domestic use. He merely makes a noise with them, knowing that of all sounds the midnight rustle of a newspaper is the one which will most successfully banish sleep from your eyes. If a mouse finds an eligible newspaper in your bedroom he will settle himself down to a night of fun and jollity. He will rattle that newspaper till morning, and the only effect of throwing boots at him or of getting up and lighting the gas and searching for him with a poker will be that he will hide himself till you lie down to sleep and then resume his little newspaper game. If this does not show a sense of humor it would be difficult to say what it does show.

Then there is the well known fact that no sooner does a mouse trap or a cat enter a house than it is followed by a troop of mice. Cats and traps draw mice as the pole draws the magnet. The mouse loves the game of teasing the cat by stimulating the latter's hopes of capturing mice. It is considered the height of fun among mice to scuttle across a room, in the presence of a cat and to disappear in a hole just as the cat is ready to pounce. Of course, now and then a too reckless mouse pays the penalty of rashness by being caught by the cat, but accidents of this kind are more rare among mice than football accidents among men and in no way render mice shy of the game. — Pearson's.

Science and Field Mice

1895

In France a few years ago the field mice almost devoured some of the farmers' crops. The wretched little pests were so numerous that they got in each other's way, like denizens of a tenement house, and disease broke out among them. A great epidemic carried them off in certain localities so that almost none were left. The farmers thanked heaven and took courage again.

But the mysterious dying off of the mice attracted the attention of Professor Danysz of the parasite laboratory of the Paris chamber of commerce. He dissected some of the dead mice. He found that their bodies were swarming with a microbe, undoubtedly the one that killed them. Then a bright thought occurred to Professor Danysz. He soaked 80,000 bits of bread in 12 gallons of water that had been plentifully mixed with the microbe cultures. He scattered the bread over a farm and waited.

In a short time the fields were dotted with dead and dying mice. The remedy is so effectual that the field mice will soon be exterminated in France if farmers follow up the discovery. Professor Danysz is a benefactor to the race.

What is the reason that all offensive vermin — rats, mice, roaches, flies and other such pests — cannot be driven off the earth by inoculating them with deadly microbes? What is to prevent the utter destruction of the mosquito every summer in this way?

The Solitary Breakfast – 1917 and 2007

1917

At first blush breakfast seems a sociable meal; at that hour a man is best satisfied, or least discontented, with himself, and in a mood to make the most of the world. Human vitality at its maximum, mere existence lugs exhilaration along with it; good humor mantles everything. But there is an uncertainty in company even when you may choose it; for temperament is never to be wholly trusted (artists are dangerous people to meet at breakfast), and there are a thousand happenings — troubled sleep, early awakening, mosquitoes, a surmised mouse, no hot water, buttoned boots, putting studs in a shirt — that may occur between going to bed at night and coming down to breakfast in the morning, and ill-adjusted feelings in even one member of the company may dampen the spirits of all. Company is no doubt the better state, and brings out the full capacities for pleasure that lie in breakfast, but a solitary breakfast is safer; solitary pleasantness is more tempered, but it is more certain. — Henry Dwight Sedgwick in Yale Review.

2007 (me)

There's always some 'feeling out' in the morning, which only takes a few seconds, to see if the company you keep has gotten up on the wrong side of the bed. By the time you actually get to breakfast, though, you definitely know. Anyway, who has time for breakfast, and who really cares to have company doing it? Out in public, seeing the various ones having their breakfast, it's like any other time. Among the billed cap set, I don't notice any distinguishing between a quiet few bites and the same old uproar of any other time. When I get up my eyes are somewhat sleep-shot, but some of these others, you'd never know they needed it.

As for the "surmised mouse," I suppose that means something. Which would be this, he hears some noise, real low level noise, chewing on a box maybe, or scampering, and surmises it's a mouse in the house. I tell you, if I surmised there were a mouse nearby, my surmising would soon become complete knowledge, and the mouse would be hunted down and extracted from the premises as soon as I had the energy to do so, which would necessarily be at that same precise moment.

Woman Swallows Mouse; To Hospital

1920

Penalty of Sleeping With Mouth Open, She Says

LONDON, England -- St. Thomas Hospital, London, has just treated a patient who told the doctors that she had swallowed a mouse. She is Mary Watson of Lambeth, a young married woman.

"I have swallowed a mouse and am very sick," she said to the doctor who attended her. She explained that she was asleep at 3 a.m. with her baby when she was awakened by the child moving.

"I saw a mouse coming along my breast. The mouse slipped into my mouth before I could stop it. I always sleep with my mouth open."

It was thought unnecessary at the hospital to put the woman under X-rays, as she was suffering from ordinary sickness only, and she left easier in mind.

--The Saturday Blade, Chicago, March 27, 1920, page 9.

Comment: So did she swallow a mouse or not?