Patch Blog: Rat Trapping History in San Marino

During the 1930s, I remember that San Marino hired a rat catcher to keep the town rat-free. This guy rode a bicycle around town, carrying his replacement traps on a rack on the back of the bike. His job was to set traps all over town.

On a second rack, also on the back of his bike, he hung the dead rats from his daily trap checks. This served two purposes: advertising and payment. We could all see the bounty of success as the rats swung back and forth by their little rat-tails. I remember being quite impressed by how many he had there every time he went by. In addition, at the end of each day, the rat catcher would take his dead catches to City Hall and get paid something per rat. It looked like a great job to me.

I was just a kid back then and eager to be in competition with this guy. I was too young to get the job for pay, so I decided to practice for my future career in the rat catching business. I set some traps in our woodpile and more in back of the incinerator.

Now, setting spring traps was a complex activity for a 10-year old. You have to pull the spring wire snapper back and carefully hold it while setting the holder bar under the trigger bar. And of course, once you got it, it was always fun to drop a rock on the trigger bar and imagine how it would feel if you got your toe (or tail) stuck in there.

After this delicate maneuver (and I have to admit, I was pretty good at it) I would bait the trigger with cheese or smelly meat and place the trap in a likely place. It was well known that the professional rat catcher cut up his dead rats for bait, but I couldn’t do that because I wasn’t as lucky. I didn’t seem to get many dead rats. I would also forget to check the traps on a regular basis so the ones I did catch were never considered “fresh” bait.

Being young and impatient, I got a little tired of waiting for the traps to do the work and finally started sitting outside and to watch for rats. When I saw one running around in the woodpile, I pulled out my pellet gun and  aimed straight.  “Pow! Pow!” It was great hunting, but not very fruitful. I couldn’t catch any rats! They were too fast for me. Finally, I went back to the idea of the traps. I decided to get some bigger ones and really get the job done. The problem there was that they didn’t catch any rats either. Instead, I caught the neighbor’s cat and got loud complaints for that!

These days, we have a cat at our house, just two doors down from where I grew up. I suppose the descendants of those same furry friends decades ago are still scurrying through our woodpile out back. And every once in awhile, our cat brings a dead rat into our house, plays with it, purrs, and seems quite proud of his hunting ability. I’m sure glad I found a better career in the end, because that cat does a better job at rat catching than I ever did!