Corn? Or barley is it?Its oats. Soaked in deadly pye-zn. You take just one of them grains in your mouth and youd be a gonner in five minutes!
Honest?
Yep. Never out of me sight, this tin.
He caressed it with his hands and gave it a little shake so that the oat grains rustled softly inside.
But not today. Your rats dont get this today. They wouldnt have it anyway. That they wouldnt. Theres where you got to know rats. Rats is suspicious. Terrible suspicious, rats is. So today they gets some nice clean tasty oats asll do em no harm in the world. Fatten em, thats all itll do. And tomorrow they gets the same again. And itll taste so good therell be all the rats in the districk comin along after a couple of days.
Rather clever.
You got to be clever on this job. You got to be cleverern a rat and thats sayin somethin.
Youve almost got to be a rat yourself, I said. It slipped out in error, before I had time to stop myself, and I couldnt really help it because I was looking at the man at the time. But the effect upon him was surprising.
There! he cried. Now you got it! Now you really said somethin! A good ratters got to be more like a rat than anythin else in the world! Cleverer even than a rat, and thats not an easy thing to be, let me tell you!
-- Roald Dahl, The Ratcatcher.