Posted on 02/23/2005 8:33:11 AM PST by yankeedame
Hungry rats attack sleeping people
02/17/2005 18:06
A rat has recently attacked a little baby in the city of Tver, Central Russia. When the baby-girl was sleeping alone in the room, a rat attacked the child and started biting her furiously in the face. The little girl was hospitalized as a result of the incident - doctors of the local hospital managed to save the child's life, although the girl had to stay in the reanimation department of the hospital for quite a long time.
The State Sanitary Service of the Tver region said that incidents of rat attacks were extremely rare. Such occurrences have not been registered in the region during several recent years at all.
Specialists for the Sanitary Service said that the attack probably occurred because of the fact that there was a grocery store in the apartment block, where the family was living.
The store was closed for repairs for a long time, which made hungry rats start looking for food all over the house.
As it turned out later, the grocery store was not the reason of the above-mentioned rat attack. It was not the first occurrence in Tver, when rodents attacked humans. People, who live in an apartment block in another street of the city, said that they were afraid to sleep at night because of a very large quantity of rats and mice in the building.
A rat has already attacked and bit one of the families. The animal crawled into a bedroom at night and attacked a sleeping woman.
The woman woke up because of the terrible pain. "It took me some time to realize what was going on. When I finally came to my senses, I chased the rat away, although it managed to scratch my husband's neck as it was escaping," the woman said.
As a result, the two people had to undergo a complete course of medical treatment.
Rats and other rodents are known for transmitting a whole bouquet of lethal diseases, including plague and rabies.
All inhabitants of the above-mentioned building are trying to protect their apartments with rat and mouse traps, although they might not be any help.
The people addressed to a sanitary service, where they were told that the service had no money for any disinfecting or deratizating procedures.
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Read the original in Russian: (Translated by: Dmitry Sudakov)
I thought this was going to be about Jerrold Nadler.
well at least they have plenty of meat.
"reanimation department?"
Gee, I wish we had those.
Interesting translation (along with "deratizating" or whatever it was). I would suggest a .22 caliber solution to the problem.
I call upon every good citizen to catch a 'feral' cat, stick it in a crate (preferably with a few air holes), and we'll airdrop them into Russia. If the cats win, great, if the rats win, well...We can stop funding these 'sterilize and release' programs.
I believe H.P. Lovecraft had a story "Herbert West: Reanimator". But I don't think Russian science is that advanced.
Not to nitpick, but cats are just good mousers. When it comes to rats, kitties are a form of rat chow. To do the job right, a terrier is a much better choice.
Oh now, come on; surely this happens so often it scarcely rates as "news."
When I was in Ukraine and Russia--on my own; I was just wandering around, looking at things--and spent nights in village cottages and hovels, it was always very difficult to decide if the bedbugs, or the rats, were the worst problem.
Rats like to chew on toes; it was irritating, and since then, I have really loathed, despised, hated, detested, abhorred, cursed, rats, no matter where they are and what they are doing.
That'd have to be a pretty big rat...They don't get much bigger than the ones in the pet stores, do they?
I'm sure a feral cat would be more capable -- but I can tell you that in Victorian Britain, with horse stables scattered throughout cities, and oats, and hay, and grain stored nearby, the terrier was the ratter-of-choice.
They need to get their priorities right. 
The barn cats catch field mice, while there's a Jack Russell terrier that will go after the rats. We also had a young hawk move in recently, so he's also helping with the rat population.
Yes, I've heard several similar stories about rats attacking sleeping children in New York. Rats are just nasty.
Solution--put all of the people in tis province on "fear Factor". they're basically a shue-in to win the 50 grand, then they won't be poor anymore.
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