MUIRHEAD`S MYSTERIES: The case of the entombed rat.

I am familiar with entombed toads,frogs,bats,tortoise and lizards but this old story,from the Kalamazoo Gazette (Montana) of September 2nd 1837 is the first time I have come across an entombed rat.

So read on...

A LIVE RAT ENTOMBED IN STONE  ."Yesterday week, as two miners, of the name of Jonathan Thompson, and George Douglass, were occupied in blasting a drift, a strata of solid stone, called scar limestone, at Alson Moor,, six fathoms below the surface, they into a small cavity of the rock, out of which to their surprise sprang a full grown rat. The miners endeavoured to take the animal alive , but in their attempts to do so, it was killed. How long the rat had been embedded in its living grave, and in what manner it had contrived in such a situation to exist ( considering the organic formation of the animal,) are questions that must be left to conjecture. On examination, the strata around the cavity was found to be perfectly solid and close in every part." - Newcastle Journal

There is an Alston Moor in Cumbria and also an Alson Moor.