Uncle Dick and Lisa's Old Time Animal Tales

An Awful and Almost Incredible Story.
The number of rats inhabiting the rocky crevices and cavernous passages at the summit of Pike’s pike-says a correspondent of yesterday’s Pueblo Chieftain-have recently become formidable and dangerous. These animals are known to feed on saccharine gum that percolates through the pores of the rocks apparently upheaved by some volcanic action. Since the establishment of the Government signal station on the summit of the Peak, at an altitude of nearly 15,000 feet, these animals have acquired a voracious appetite for raw and uncooked meat, the scent of which seems to impart in them a ferocity rivaling the fierceness of the starved Siberian wolf. The most singular trait in the character of these animals is that they are never seen in the day time. When the moon pours down her queenly light upon the summit they may be seen in countless numbers trooping around the barren waste, and during the warm summer months they may be seen swimming and sporting in the waters of the lake, a short distance below the peak, and of a dark cloudy night, their trail in the water is marked by a sparkling light, giving to the water of the lake a bright and silvery appearance.
A few days since Mr. John T. M. O’Keefe, one of the Government operators at the signal station upon the peak, returned to his post, taking with him up on a pack animal, a quarter of beef. It being late in the afternoon, his colleague, Mr. Hobbs, immediately left with the pack animal for the springs. Soon after dark, while Mrs. O’Keefe was engaged in the office forwarding night dispatches to Denver and Washington, he was startled by a loud scream from Mrs. O’Keefe, who had just retired for the night to an adjoining bed-room, and who came rushing into the office screaming. “The rats! the rats!” Mr. O’Keefe, with great presence of mind, immediately drew around his wife a scroll zinc plating, which prevented the animals from climbing upon her person, and although his own person was literally covered with them, he succeeded in encasing both of his legs each in a joint of stove-pipe, when he commenced a fierce and desperate struggle for the preservation of life, being armed with a heavy cane. Hundreds were destroyed on each side, while they still seemed to pour in with increasing numbers from the bedroom, the door of which had been left open. The entire quarter of beef was eaten in less than five minutes, which seemed to only sharpen their appetites for an attack on Mr. O’Keefe, whose hands, face and neck were terribly lacerated. In the midst of the warfare, Mrs. O’Keefe managed to reach the office, from which she threw a coil of electric wire over her husband that sprang outward and spread itself over the room, then, grasping the valve of the battery, she poured all its terrible power upon the wire. In an instant the room was all ablaze with electric light, and hundreds were killed by the shock, when the sudden appearance of daylight by the coruscation of the heavily charged wire, caused them to take refuge among the crevices and caverns of the mountain, by way of the bedroom window, through which they forced their way.
But the saddest part of the night adventure upon the Peak was the destroying of their infant child, which Mrs. O’Keefe thought she had made securely by a heavy covering of bed-clothing. But the rats had found their way to the infant only two months old, and left nothing of it but the peeled and naked skull. Doctors Horn and Anderson have just returned to Colorado Springs from the Peak. It was thought at first that the left arm of Sergeant O’Keefe would have to be amputated, but they believe it can be saved.-Denver News.