C. Barkley's little manual on rat catching (and rabbit catching) is from a past era when life was much simpler and our propensity to call a pest a pest was not diminished by the selective fads and niceties of modernity. Most important of all, it was an era when the Aristotelian idea of ends - the proper conduct of a life towards a desired conclusion - was of importance not just for humans, but for all living things. It was proper and ordained for rats to live rat-centred lives, doing the things rats do, just as it was proper for ferrets to do the things that come natural to them. And, as...