In Copper Mines of Michigan Rodents Are Regarded as Preventors, Not Carriers, of Disease.
    There are few places in the world where rats are well thought of, but in the copper mines of Michigan there rodents, so universally despised, and causing so much danger to health and damage to property everywhere else, are regarded differently. In the shafts of the copper mines hundreds of feet below the surface dwells a species of rat that never sees the light of day and is held in high appreciation by the miners. It is because these underground rodents are valuable to sanitation, preventers rather than carriers of disease. They indulge in no depredations for the reason they exist within rockbound walls inclosing nothing possible for animals such as they destroy.
    The rats are the scavengers of the mines. They keep the workings clear of refuse. They are protected by the men; are often fed from dinner pails and have become so accustomed to the miners that they frisk about the workers wholly unafraid, secure in the apparent realization that, while elsewhere they are hunted and slain as enemies of mankind, underground they are treated as allies and are immune from harm.
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