During the 60's, when I was child, our family GP found an unorthodox cure for his patient. My older sister had been very depressed, as her pet hamster had escaped. It had a history of escaping its cage, yet on this occasion it had completely vanished. Within days, our resourceful doctor presented us with an ingenious contraption; he'd designed and built himself. It came in the form of a small wooden box with a red Mechano trapdoor. In the middle of the box was some bait on a small pivoting platform. The platform was fitted with a trigger mechanism to release the trap door. This in turn created electrical circuit that activated a large bell.
I remember marvelling over it as we placed it under the stairs. I was five-and-a-half years old and this invention was to inspire me in later life. As the days went by we became less hopeful of finding the hamster and my sister became quite morose. My mother, pregnant at the time, was suffering badly from a slipped disc. As she painfully climbed the stairs one morning a loud high-pitched ringing sounded beneath her and she jumped out of her skin. "Ahey!" Shouted my sister
"My hamster"
"Ahey" shouted my mother "My back". In an instant, one member of the family was cured of depression the other of her vertebrae problem.
Incentifed by this 38 year old memory, I found the necessity to re-create Dr Yates's marvelous rodent-catching invention.
Loud screams could be heard from our kitchen one Sunday morning; it was Karen announcing the arrival of an unwanted guest. She claimed she'd seen a massive rat's tail disappear behind the kitchen sink. Later in the day, after much disinfecting, we'd laid conventional spring-loaded traps but with no success. This rat was very smart. An ingenious, yet simple rattrap is a special sheet of paper with unbelievable sticking power intended to glue the rodent stuck as it scuttles over. Matthew and I can vouch for its stickiness as we had spent a considerable time peeling ourselves free after testing its effectiveness on each other. However, days later we found it was also useless, but at least now we had our friend's footprints. Large ones. Karen had not exaggerated the size of this rat.
(Apparently, experts regard peanut butter as the best bait).
As the days went by, the rat was obviously growing fat on all the bait we'd laid. We were beginning to admire our persistent rodent friend for his intelligence. That is, all of us except for Karen, who was beginning to get quite angry and spent a lot of time shouting. Well, the house was beginning to smell. Admittedly earlier in the week there was a faint smell of rancid cheese and rotting prawn (I thought the aroma would attract the rat) but by the end of the week there was an eye-watering stench throughout the house. Karen was really shouting by now. Life was becoming unbearable. Our un-paying lodger was causing serious marital problems. Trying to be helpful, Matthew suggested poison. No, I said, husbands had tried it in the past and it's always detectable in autopsies. He pondered for a moment to decide if I was joking. The problem with poisoning the rat was where it would end up dying and, more importantly, where it would end up rotting. I guessed it would be some unreachable part of the kitchen, never to be extracted unless we employed the services of a carpenter to dissemble and reassemble our custom-built kitchen units. By the end of the week Matthew and I set about testing our own carpentry skills and worked all night in an attempt to recreate the doctor's contraption. The end result may not have impressed Dr Yates, yet it certainly would have interested Heath Robinson. But would it work?
