Whenever I hear about rat problems, I think, "Why don't they just
send some cats?" It's always seemed obvious to me. No poison, rats
are gone the natural way, the cats love it, there's more room at
shelters for adoptable cats, everyone's happy. (Even the rats would
probably prefer to be killed by a cat than by rat poison, if given
the choice.)

My wife spent a few years as the cook in a specialist music school.
They never had any problem with rats or mice, and it was an old
labyrinthine building that should have been riddled with them.
Thy had an inspection once that involved a guy from Rentokil (the
pest control company) - he concluded that the kids playing and
singing in every corner of the building all year round scared the
bejeezus out of the rodents.

Whether it's more humane to a mouse to subject it to hours of high
speed A flat minor scales on the violin, opera warmups and practice
sessions for a percussion audition at college, or just bite its head
off, I can't be sure.

Next to our village are both the Scottish Mining Museum and the
Lothian Cat Rescue shelter. The museum (a colossal former coal
mine that closed in 1980) is a rambling mass of huge semi-open
buildings you could never keep rats and mice out of; it has a
permanent population of unadoptable mousers supplied by the LCR
shelter. If they had opposable thumbs they'd spray the brickwork
with tags and wear baseball caps backwards.

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Jack Campin, 11 Third Street, Newtongrange, Midlothian EH22 4PU, Scotland
mobile 07800 739 557 http://www.campin.me.uk Twitter: JackCampin