1.
MS- Boy walks in front of house...
0.05

2.
4 shots-garbage in back alley...
0.14

3.
LS- Men walking down alley...
0.18

4.
MCU-Same...
0.21

5.
3 shots-Man approaches rat burrow, pumps poisonous gas into it...
0.34

6.
CU- Rat burrow...
0.35

7.
CU- Man's hands pumping gas....
0.37

8.
4 shots: Rats emerge front holes, run short distance and die...
0.51

9.
MCU- Man carries dead rat on shovel..
0.59

10.
MS - Man inspects dead rats...
1.04

11.
CU - Same...
1.07

12.
4 shots; Children sitting on steps of house in slum area....
1.18



Initials lj



Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved

Background: City officials in Cleveland, Ohio have begun a program to eradicate rats which infest the city's slums.

City crews have been working since last October to eliminate rats in Cleveland ghettoes. The crews search for rat burrows. When one is found, a crew fills it with poison gas. City officials claim they have eliminated nearly all the rats in a 132-block area of Cleveland, but the job ahead is still immense. One pair of rats can produce 15-hundred offspring in a year. Many residents of the slums do not dispose properly of their garbage, providing the rats easy access to food. This means the city must educate slum dwellers on how to dispose of garbage so that rats can not get at it.

Officials at all levels of government in the United States are just becoming aware of the importance of eliminating rats from city slums. President Johnson's administration sent a 40-million dollar national rat extermination bill to Congress, but it was voted down. Several municipal and state governments have started extermination programs of their own. The Cleveland program is one example.