Vermin

Garbage harbors vermin.

In Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, humans are described as being "the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth."

Two hundred million years after the solar collision innumerable species of sub-human grazers with long sheep-like muzzles, ample molars, and almost ruminant digestive systems, were competing with one another on the polar continent. Upon these preyed the sub-human carnivora, of whom some were built for speed in the chase, others for stalking and a sudden spring. But since jumping was no easy matter on Neptune, the cat-like types were all minute. They preyed upon man's more rabbit-like and rat-like descendants, or on the carrion of the larger mammals, or on the lusty worms and beetles. These had sprung originally from vermin which had been transported accidentally from Venus. For of all the ancient Venerian fauna only man himself, a few insects and other invertebrates, and many kinds of micro-organisms, succeeded in colonizing Neptune. Of plants, many types had been artificially bred for the new world, and from these eventually arose a host of grasses, flowering plants, thick-trunked bushes, and novel sea-weeds. On this marine flora fed certain highly developed marine worms; and of these last, some in time became vertebrate, predatory, swift and fish-like. On these in turn man's own marine descendants preyed, whether as sub-human seals, or still more specialized subhuman porpoises.

Scientists say the biggest nuisance caused by the cicadas is when they die and their carcasses fall to the ground, often attracting vermin.

Cats became a favored household pet over the centuries, in large part due to their natural ability to hunt and eradicate household pests and vermin, such as mice and rats.

But through the heavy pasturing of that section, together with a series of dry seasons denuding the whole country of such cover as would be necessary for the bird's protection from hawks and vermin, they have become nearly if not quite extinct.

Tom used to be a monstrous vermin, until he awoke one day transformed into a human.

I believe that place is teeming with vermin.

The area was crawling with all sorts of vermin: fleas, lice, mice, and rats to name a few. Thus, we felt as if vermin were crawling over us.

Vermin was everywhere; night and day it crawled gaily over the walls and ceiling, about our bodies, and into our very food, and, although the subject did not interest us, a naturalist would have delighted in the ever-changing varieties of insect life.