A day with a rat catcher
From our US edition
The rat hunter opens the tongs, takes a breath and lunges forward. It takes him a few seconds to get a firm hold on the Norway rat, who claws, bites and shrieks at the wrought iron. Tim wrestles it into the bucket, holding its flailing form underneath the water for several seconds before slamming the top shut. “He put up a good fight,” says Tim, exhaling while he shakes his head. “Supervisor didn’t tell me it was a live one.” Two days earlier, he’d been called to a home of a young woman – a “little girl” as he described her – where a rat had been caught in a trap inside a cabinet. He got to the house. He opened the cabinet. He saw the trap. He saw the rat. There was a problem: the trap was empty.
