Under the headline “Rat Killing Campaign to Open in City Next Tuesday,” the Daily News outlined plans by the Boy Scouts to poison the city’s rodents in June 1941.

The poison concoction was “to be mixed by the Scouts with salmon donated by the local A&P and Piggly Wiggly stores, meal donated by the Broadway Roller Mill and red squill poison” purchased by the city council. The rat extermination campaign was “based on the destructiveness of the rodents to food supplies, buildings, … and on the fact that the rat is the carrier of the dreaded typhus germ.”

– “Way Back When in Warren County” is compiled by researchers at the Warren County Public Library and appears twice weekly in the Bowling Green Daily News. For more information about the library, visit warrenpl.org.