RESILIENT rats are plaguing Old Town.

As you may have read in the Adver the other day, the problem’s so bad that the BBC has devoted an entire episode of a consumer programme to the work of a local pest control firm.

Although companies can tackle outbreaks in homes and businesses, wiping out the entire Old Town rat population by conventional means would be a tall order.

We need to think outside the box, and I reckon I’m the man to do it.

As far as I’m aware, the only examples of entire populations of mutant animals being wiped out happened in 1970s horror novels such as James Herbert’s The Rats and Guy N Smith’s Night of the Crabs, in which some intrepid hero always managed to locate the source of the plague and eliminate it.

I therefore propose setting up a new pest control operation called 1970s Squad, funded by local businesses.

The 1970s Squad chief investigator should be carefully chosen from the ranks of men who last updated their wardrobe some time during the final Wilson government. He should also have an Engelbert Humperdinck-in-Vegas haircut and ideally one of those droopy moustaches that used to be known as a Zapata.

Why? Because it was always a bloke like that who used to beat the creatures in the books. There should also be a woman whose role will consist solely of being rescued by the bloke at least twice and engaging with him in romantic liaisons of a kind which would tax the body of even the most supple gymnast.

The 1970s Squad should not be called in until the murderous beasties – be they rats, bats, badgers or whatever – have offed several people, including at least one tramp in a derelict building and one courting couple who are surprised in mid-clinch during a woodland tryst.

The lead investigator, the one with the Zapata moustache, should carry with him about a dozen small vials of randomly-chosen substances such as Hai Karate cologne, Tizer, kumquat juice, Bovril and powdered cheese and onion flavour Golden Wonder Rock’n’Rollers snacks. He should have them handy for his first face-to-face encounter with the creatures, ready to throw at them in order to discover the creatures’ secret weakness.

As any student of 1970s horror novels knows, all such creatures have a secret weakness that can kill them. As soon as the weakness is discovered it’s a simple matter of phoning up the Ministry of Defence and having them make up a big batch of whatever it is the creatures are vulnerable to.

Then, while the men from the ministry are spraying the beastie killer all over town, the lead investigator must take a big bucket of it for himself and head off to confront the chief creature in its underground lair.

You see, this is where most ordinary pest control organisations go wrong. They only kill the ordinary pests but fail to realise that there’s a chief creature in a lair that keeps fathering or giving birth to other ones.

Conveniently, when chief creatures are selecting a lair, they usually go for something fairly obvious such as a sewer or the basement of a deserted factory. All the chief investigator has to do is locate the sewer or the factory, follow the trail of skulls, leg bones and ribcages to the lair and have at it with the bucket.

Of course, he should make sure to not to check the lair too carefully afterwards, as convention dictates that the next chief creature should be allowed to live, ready for a sequel.

I’m convinced this strategy would do wonders in reducing our rat infestation, although if it’s deemed too outlandish there are alternatives.

Declaring the rats a local treasure might be a good one, as in this neck of the woods that’s often a quick way of reducing something to ruin.

  • CARE UK, the firm behind the 111 non-emergency service, is being fined for failing to meet targets. 

Its failures cover everything from the number of ambulances sent to the number of transfers to clinical advisors. 

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I seem to recall that when the changes to the service were announced, we were told it marked the dawn of a golden age in health care, with advice swiftly offered, ambulances dispatched only where they were needed, efficiency improved and money saved all over the place. 

Perhaps some of the highly-paid public officials who made these claims would care to come forward and explain why what they said turned out to be a complete load of nonsense. 

Incidentally, do you get the feeling the targets are likely to be ‘revised’ in the near future, so shoddiness magically becomes its opposite? 

  • LAST week some cattle had to be rescued from sewage sludge near the Ridgeway, after ramblers left a gate to their field open. 

Two of them had to be hauled out of the muck with ropes, and it’s not the first time farm animals have been released into the wider countryside by some inconsiderate fool. Similar stories pop up with depressing regularity. 

Clearly the decades of public information films and appeals by farmers’ organisations have failed to make an impression on a rather dim-witted minority – and nor has the possibility of being prosecuted and fined. 

A better alternative would be to tweak the law a little, and force offenders to offer a few months’ room and board to any animal they caused to escape. 

Surely nothing would sharpen the mind like Daisy and her mates making free with the ornamental borders and using the conservatory as a lav.

  • A PUBLIC Health England report suggests Swindon suffers skyrocketing levels of obesity, self-harm and sexually transmitted disease. 

In view of the fact that all three of these problems – overeating, self-destructive tendencies and reckless sexual behaviour – are well-known symptoms of extreme stress and anxiety, it would be useful if somebody in charge came up with solutions to these underlying issues.