Uncle Dick and Lisa's Old Time Animal Tales

     Mattoon, Ill., Aug. 19.- Pie-eating, quail-eating, fishing and rabbit killing contests are not uncommon, but the people of Obed, near Mattoon, are now in the throes of a new kind of contest that is engrossing the attention of the inhabitants of the little town. The contest has for its object the extermination of rats, and every man, boy and woman is busy with gun, poison or trap. “The rats at Obed became so numerous recently,” says a citizen of that place, “that they threatened to drive the people from their homes.”