The Works of Vermin

Part I

I

While this handbook is designed to prepare an exterminator for the common dangers he might face afield, we discourage the reader from viewing it as a definitive and final authority.

Consider instead each edition a small molt in the life of a larger organism, for the category of vermin is ever-expanding and always incomplete.

The quickest way to a man’s heart may be through his rib cage, as the anatomists say, but the quickest way to his brain is through his nose.

—Madame Fauniche