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14
Verminous Houses.-
Five houses were found to be verminous during the year:
Council Houses 2
Other Houses 3
The Council Houses were a pair of semi-detached "parlour"
type houses and had been fumigated some years ago. They were
treated with "Zaldecide" by the Council's workmen each house being
sprayed twice with an interval of 14 days between each spraying. One
house was empty at the time. The houses are now both occupied and
no reports have heen received as to presence of vermin.
Of the other houses one was treated similarly to the Council
Houses and a satifactory result obtained. The other two houses were
semi-detached and were fumigated with " Cimex."
Number of inspections and visits, 40.
Rats and Mice (Destruction) Act, 1919.
The destruction of rats continues to take up a considerable amount
of time as it is carried on throughout the year though during rat week
as much time as can be spared is devoted to this purpose. The rat
population must be gradually decreasing as building operations encroach
upon farm land and private estates, but with such a large area of forest
it is difficult to take other than palliative measures to exterminate these
pests. There are a few places in the district where it seems impossible
to get rid of all the rats—these are farms and similar places ; and as much
help as possible is given to keep the rats from unduly increasing. There
is one refuse dump in the district where rat hunts were organised periodically
and now the contractors who dump on this site have engaged a
firm who specialize in rat destruction to deal with the problem and 1
understand that considerable progress has been made.
The methods used for rat destruction have not been changed,
they are:—
1. Gassing by a Cyano Gas Pump.
2. Baiting with Red Squill.
The first method continues to give satisfactory results and at the
rear of one business premises over twenty rats were killed during rat
week in just over an hour.
Baiting is done where it is dangerous to use the Gas Pump and
the results obtained are, on the whole, very good.