The Minneapolis Journal, August 16, 1901, p. 7

FOUGHT RATS IN THE DARK

J. K. Mason of New York Awakened by Fearless Rodents Crawling on His Bed in a Minneapolis Hotel.

One of the local hotels has set several large rat traps in locations about the house that look suspicious, and J. K. Mason, a New York gentleman, visiting the west for the first time, is writing friends at home about hair raising experiences in the wild and woolly west.

Last night Mr. Mason, who had retired early, was awakened by something on the bed that gave his whole frame a peculiar, creeping sensation. His dreams to that hour had been peaceful but what he saw in the next few seconds forced him to rub his eyes to make sure that it was not all a dream. Two big rats, looking to Mason as large as rabbits, were roosting on the counterpane and taking a survey of the New York man.

There are different sensations. The man who is drowning sees the whole story of his life as in a kaleidoscope. The man who is being kicked down stairs imagines that his neighbor's goat is after him. The rat sensation is different. Mason, for the first twenty seconds, could not make a move. Then the most familiar of the two rats began to creep, slowly, slowly, slowly along the ridge in the counter pane made by his left leg, toward his face. The other followed at the same pace. Mason has laughed at this wife for being afraid of mice but he never will again. Not as long as he remembers that twenty seconds of time that seemed like twenty minutes. The New York man finally did turn his head to the side and his eye fell on his shoe. That broke the spell. He jumped out of bed and grabbed the footwear. Instead of leaving him the rats came after. It was a wild fight in the dimly lighted room between Mason and the rats with the air full of shoes, but he finally beat them out, and the rodents disappeared through the hole under the radiator.

There are some things that Mason expected to find in the west. He looked for the appearance of Teddy Roosevelt grizzlies after he got some distance out, but the appearance of fearless rats as big as rabbits in this clime and that hour came as a jolting, hair raising, surprise.