A Plague of Rats

                 "Ring, a ring a rosy,
                  A pocketful of posies,
                  A- tishoo! A- tishoo!
                  We all fall down!"

Some say that this poem is all about the Bubonic plague - perhaps the Great Plague of London in 1664. The rings of rosy are round red sores on the skin, the posies are little bundles of herbs and spices to help ward off the plague and a-tishoo is a sneeze. Plague victims sneezed before they fell down dead.

The plague was a horrible illness.This week's story is about some plague carrying rats and the day they headed for Mokau. Not many people know this story. Perhaps it was kept secret.

Rewind

The rats hit Mokau in 1900. Did these events really happen way back then? Just answer true or false.

1. Auckland welcomed its first ever car.
2. Women in New Zealand receive the right to stand for Parliament for the first time.
3. Auckland has a case of Bubonic plague so the Government passes a law to stop it.
4. The first person in New Zealand to jump out of a plane with a parachute, lands safely.
5. Students have to train for the army, at school.

Answers at the bottom of the page.

Word watch

All the words below are in this weeks story. Pick the best meaning and then check your answers when you later read the story.

1. barricade (a) blockade or (b) lock
2. corpses (a) dead rats or (b) dead bodies
3. post-mortem (a) an enquiry or (b) a medical examination of a dead body
4. bacteriologist (a) a person who studies bacteria for medical or agricultural purposes or (b) a scientist who studies the behaviour of diseases
5. pandemic (a) when an illness or disease affects a great many people over a wide geographical area or (b) the outbreak of a deadly disease
6. amputation (a) a nasty accident  or (b) surgical removal of a body part
7. forte (a) occupation or (b) something in which a person excels-becomes very good at
8. preservative (a) something- perhaps a chemical that will stop spoilage or (b) a disinfectant
9. pestilence (a) deadly germs or (b) a usually fatal epidemic disease
10. marauders (a) raiders or (b) disease carriers

Answers at the bottom of the page.

What do you know about the Bubonic Plague?

Try this quiz with a classmate without doing any research and then, look for the answers here.

1. In the 1300s the plague killed half the population in the west of this great continent. WHERE?
2. The skin of diseased people turned a dark grey colour so the plague was given this name. WHAT?
3. The plague lives in the blood of this animal. WHICH ONE?
4. This insect passes the plague onto humans. WHICH ONE?
5. The plague spread very quickly in the olden days because of two types of living conditions. WHAT?
6. These days the plague can be cured. In ancient times this helpful science was very primitive. WHICH SCIENCE?
7. The plague was horrifying because parts of the body would swell until they burst! WHICH PARTS?
8. People still die from the plague in some parts of the world. WHERE?

Flea facts

Like rats, fleas have a lot to do with the Bubonic plague. If I was you, I would read these these flea facts.

Fleas have been around for about 100 million years. They may have bitten a Tyrannosaurus Rex or Triceratops.

Some fleas can jump 150 times their own length. That's like a human jumping over 300 metres.

The world record for a flea jump is a 1.21 metre jump straight up into the air. Some fleas could probably jump higher but not all fleas are interested in records.

A flea can live more than 100 days without a blood meal if they are left to do their own thing. On average they live two to three months.

Female fleas begin to lay eggs within 36 to 48 hours after their first blood meal.

The female flea consumes 15 times her own body weight in blood daily. Perhaps that's why she lays so many eggs - 2000 in her lifetime.

Adult fleas all suck the blood of dogs, cats, rats or some mammal, including us. Their larvae are blind and they can feed on the scraps of the host animal's environment. Perhaps they eat our dandruff.

If you see one flea, there may be more than 100 others lurking nearby.

The cat flea, which also likes dogs, is a tropical insect and doesn't like freezing temperatures. You don't usually find a cat flea on a polar bear, or a penguin.

There are more than 2,000 known species and subspecies of fleas but it is almost always the cat flea on your cat or dog.

Fleas are often confused with bedbugs, lice and ticks. No one really knows if fleas mind.

The largest recorded flea is the North American Hystrichopsylla schefferi. It's 12mm in length, which is quite long for a flea.

Go the rats

No-one knew where they had come from and no-one knew where they were going. Read the first part of this week's story "Rats that swarmed and swam."

Where do you think the great swarm of rats had come from? Rats remember, are very hardy. They can climb almost anything, including a sheer wall and they can fall 20 metres without injury.

There must have been a reason for these rats leaving one place and heading to Mokau.

Think about these things:

• Did these rats all leave the same place at the same time or did they pick up other rats along the way.
• Did they come from a major town or city?
• Was there a lead rat?
• Were they all male rats?
• Had they run out of food?
• Were they gypsy rats with no fixed abode?-(no home)
• Were they being chased?
• Did they run along the beach or were they inland movers?

Work out a theory with a classmate and then draw the rat route on this map  to show how they got to Mokau. Print the map out.

Share your ideas with class or another pair.

Barricade the house!

The Mokau people tried to stop the rat invasion. They barricaded their houses.

How do you stop a rat getting inside your house? They can squeeze through six millimetre holes and often find their way into the ceiling on the first cold night of autumn. You hear them setting up house- right next to the chimney where it's warm. They probably relax up there - chill out.

Draw a cartoon of a rat chilling out in a Mokau roof. It could be for a picture book based on this week's story... "The day the rats came to town." There are plenty of good rats in this week's cartoons to use as models.

A suspicious death

The plot thickens! Read "A suspicious death in Auckland," and find out how the Bubonic plague was discovered in Auckland.

It seems the disease could have been carried into the Port of Auckland by ship's rats. You can see some ship's rats here.

It was quite easy for a rat to get ashore. They just ran down the mooring lines- the big ropes that tied the ships to the wharf. The fleas carrying the Bubonic plague went along for the ride.

Design a rat guard that could have been used on the mooring lines. Draw it set up on the line and jot down the specifications like its size and what it is made out of.

Compare your rat guard with others.

A close look at Bubonic bacilli

Bubonic bacilli are carried by fleas. A bacilli is any one of the various rod-shaped, spore-forming, bacteria of the genus Bacillus. (Genus is the name for a group with similar characteristics)

Bubonic bacilli are called yersinia pestis. It's where we get the word pestilence from and pestilence means a usually fatal epidemic disease.

Versinia pestis is carried by fleas and normally spread by rats. This bacillus is extremely virulent. This means it easily breaks down protection systems in the body.  Laboratory mice die after being infected with just three bacilli and when fleas bite they can vomit up 24,000 of these bacilli. That's because the bacilli have been multiplying in the flea's gut.

The fleas feed on their rats until the rats drop dead. Then the fleas look for something else to bite so they don't starve. When the flea bites a human there is a good chance that many those 24,000 bacilli flowing out of the flea's mouth, will enter the human through the skin.

Detective Dr Thomas Valintine

Symptoms of the bubonic plague include fever, chills and a sore throat. Victims also get a headache, weakness and a sore stomach. These are also the symptoms for a lot of other things so don't worry. If you feel a bit seedy it's more likely to be a cold than the Bubonic plague.

Dr Thomas was a great detective though. He recognised plague symptoms in the rats. Look for the evidence of the symptoms in parts of the story you have read so far.

Sick to death!

Dr J.A.Gilruth now had to find the truth. He had to prove it really was the bubonic plague before he raised the alarm. If it wasn't the plague, people with colds might worry themselves to death!

Read "Gilruth must make certain" and "A rat to prove the theory."

How certain could you be, from the evidence you have now, that rats with the Bubonic plague had hit Mokau? Decide on the scale below and compare your choice with a classmate.

1. Extremely certain. Definitely the plague!
2. Fairly certain. Most probably the plague.
3. Uncertain. The Mokau rats may have been tired because they were hungry.
4. Unlikely. These rats couldn't have run all the way from Auckland.
5. Impossible. Sick rats wouldn't go for a swim.

How do you do Dr Valintine? 

 Read, "So who was Dr Valintine"

Look here  to follow his journey. The only place that isn't on the map is Uruti. It's north of Urenui.

Now use this journey calculator  to find out how far Dr Valintine's round trip was. All you have to do is enter the pairs of towns below to find the distance between each one.

Work out one pair of towns at a time, scroll down and click "get directions". Do this twice. When the big map comes up scroll down and at the bottom of the map you will find the distance between your towns right down to the nearest metre. Jot each distance down and when you have them all, add them up.

• Dudley Road Inglewood to Richmond Street Waitara
• Richmond Street Waitara to Avenue Road Urenui
• Avenue Road Urenui to Kiwi Rd Uruti
  Kiwi Rd Uruti to Marco Road Whangamomona
• Marco Road Whangamomona to Cardiff Road Stratford.

Bottled rat!

Read " Go to Mokau and get me rats" and find out if the Mokau Rats really did have Bubonic plague.

What if the story had made the Taranaki Daily News? Imagine if the cartoon above was a photo. Write a kicker and a caption for this "photo".

A kicker is one or two clever words to kick the reader into the caption. For example if the photo showed the rats swimming across the river the kicker might be Water rats!

The caption is a sentence that tells readers things that they can't see just by looking at the photo.

Clean up time 

Finish the story now and find out what happened to the rats and whether anyone in Mokau actually caught the plague.

A few good things came out of the plague as the story shows. There was a huge clean up in Auckland but who were the heroes and villains of the plague scare in New Zealand? You decide.

Heroes or villains?

• The sailors on the trans-Tasman ships
• The rats
• The captains of the trans-Tasman ships
• The people of Mokau
• The fleas
• H.C. Keely
• Dr Valintine
• Dr Gilruth
• The Auckland Council. (It's been around since 1854.)
• The Government officials
• The nurses
• The cleaners

Fast forward 

Taranaki still has trouble with rats today. They attack wildlife in the National Park and other bush clad areas. Birds' eggs, chicks, lizards, and weta don't stand a chance. Rats even eat seeds. They are quick, hungry and cunning.

The Taranaki Daily News reports that the New Plymouth District Council Parks' staff is fighting back. They've found out that the long tailed predators enjoy a white chocolate button and peanut butter snack. Plenty of rats have been trapped already on the Te Henui  walkway using chocolate buttons and peanut butter for bait.

New traps were placed in Pukekura Park and Lake Mangamahoe and they caught rats straight away. Each trap is numbered and their sites are recorded using a global positioning satellite.

Unfortunately vandals have wrecked some of the traps. They may have been trying to get the white chocolate buttons and if so, they should be easy to trap. Vandals are nowhere near as cunning as rats.

Answers

Rewind

1. True, but Auckland has very bad roads and it is thought that cars won't catch on.
2. False. Women couldn't stand for Parliament until 1910.
3. True
4. False. Albert Eastward lands safely but he didn't jump until 1922. he had to wait for a plane.
5. True. A law is passed in 1900.

Word watch answers
1a, 2b, 3b, 4a, 5a, 6b, 7b, 8a, 9b, 10a

The plague quiz answers

1. Europe
2. The Black Death
3. The rat
4. The flea
5. Crowded conditions and unsanitary conditions
6. Medicine
7. The lymph nodes-glands found in the neck, armpits, and groin.
8. In isolated parts of the world.

Dr Valintine's trip distance
Around 200 kilometres. He may not have gone exactly the same way as your trip calculator but the distance would have been fairly close.