The Rats Took Over

Our pig barn was taken over by rats. The finest pig barn in the township had become an embarrassing eyesore. Everyone had to know the Lee’s had rats.

Frosts had heaved the pen floors leaving open crevices for rats to hole. They removed dirt from under the foundations so the cement walls lost their plumb and leaned in all directions. As they weakened, the prevailing West winds tilted the upper story to the East; only the stout mortised timbers and roof allowed the upper -story straw loft to remain intact. The rats chose this warm- dry spot to nest their young. On the ground floor in the feed alley was a covered-over well. Unused for years it was full of rotten wood cribbing and stinking refuse, making it an ideal accommodation for pack of rats. Their diet could not be finer for along with the swine they got swill from the house, oat-barley chop and as a treat - skim milk from the cream separator.

I’ve never conquered my fear of rats. It was my duty to carry the barn lantern for my father during night chores and I was scared stiff. Often rats plunged and leaped down the feed alley. My father seemed to have made peace with them so I asked. “Why don’t you set traps, get cats, club them - do something?”

“I’ve had big Toms,” he said, “but they got chewed up. Rats learn to avoid leg traps and if caught chew their legs off, and as for clubbing ask your grandfather.”

The pig chop was in an upright piano- shipping crate. The rats entered by chewing a hole in the end side. One day, Grandpa while tending a farrowing sow heard rat squealings in the chop box so he closed it’s heavy lid and nailed a shingle over the hole. “You should have waited for help,” I said.

“I never expected the whole pack, DY’See. I clubbed them to death with the scoop shovel in just a half hour.” Then he told me how they had snarled and shrieked and bared ferocious teeth as they jumped up to bite him. He and Dad fished out fifteen of all sizes shapes and colors. The Editor of the Bradford Witness showed up when my grandparents were taking afternoon tea. “My Word, Johnny,” Grandma said as she poured, “We’re not going to advertise, are we?” They’ll say we’re dirty.”

“Dan, Charlotte’s right, what’s said is true, my words good enough, no write-up, D’Y’ See.” The deed was never recorded. My grandmother saved her pride, my grandfather added charisma.

………………………………………

My grandparents retired to Bradford in 1928 which had neither running water nor sewers at the time. Behnd their house was a small barn, not uncommon for big houses built in horse and buggy days. It contained the outhouse as well as Grandma’s henhouse which had roosts, nests and a fenced run. She had an all-purpose flock of Plymouth Rocks; pullets, layers, capons, setters and a rooster. I’ve heard that when friends came up the walk she’d rouse Johnny to stall them long enough for to get a chicken in the oven. By the time they had hung their coats, sat down and had a glass of Sherry, a burned-out layer moved from perch to pot - dumplings again. Grandpa loathed dumplings. “Smells like a chicken coop, D’Y’See.”

Nothing was too good for Grandma’s Johnny. She combed his black curly hair and tied his tie. If she cooked him an egg, it had to be large and freshly laid so I’d be sent to get one. I was scared to death since rats infested the village chicken houses. Once while lifting a chicken a tiny warm egg slipped from her vent, Excited, I ran into the house. “My Word, Johnny, do you see this,” said Grandma.

“It’s time your pullets started to lay,” he said. Go back and lift a big hen with the reddest comb and yellowiest leg. They’re the big layers, “D’Y’see,”

“Grandpa,” I said. “I’m afraid of rats, don’t send me back again.”

“Take the scoop shovel, D’Y see, and when you come back I’ll tell story of my reputation in killing rats.

 

(Later in the year)

One day Grandma reached in the gunny sack to get a handful of feed wheat. A huge

long-tailed rat up her arm leaving a deep bleeding scratch from her wrist to her armpit.

She fainted dead away coming too only after the doctor worked on her. Grandma was

high strung with high blood pressure as well so it took sedatives, a case of porter and a

week of bedtime to settle her nerves. Only close family should be told. “My Word,

Johnny, we don’t hang out soiled linen.”

 

I was privileged to be the only grandchild to see that cruddy scab of congealed blood and iodine. I told it all 

over the place.

 

From her bed, she still refused to give up what was hers, close at hand. My grandfather

was not all that quick when it came to cleaning the stinking hen pens - once a year with

encouragement - or wakened daily by a crowing cock. Right away he sold the lot to

somebody in lower town, then pricked the doctor to spare Mrs. Lee’s nerves by telling

her - the birds must go.

 

A few days later, a municipal bylaw was passed: No live poultry of any kind shall be housed within  

Bradford’s village limits. These were Depression years and it hurt familys badly needing meat and eggs.  

The village chicken market fell apart so most of the chicken owners ate or pickled their birds, begged 

eggsfrom country friends and grumbled, except for Grandpa who put it about, “I knew it was coming,  

D’Y’See? I moved mine at the long price ages ago.”

 

(Years later)

I first saw third-world poverty in 1958 while working on a freighter off loading cargo in the Port of Trujillo, then the capital of the Dominican Republic. Packs of rats, dozens of them, ran up and down the wharf totally ignored by the stevedores walking among them.

I was mesmerized - shocked beyond belief. The wharf was a flim flam of warped planks resting on crooked-post pilings braced with a rickety of bamboo poles fronting sheds sided with salvaged crate lumber, patched with rusted steel roofing and rotting canvass. The warehouse roofs were a crude thatch of palm fronds and swail hay, bound to bamboo rafters with plaited grass ropes. Ugly black turkey vultures perched at the roofline, the first of their kind, I’d ever seen.

At daybreak a cadaverous – looking crowd came begging work. Eventually, an old -model Jaguar pulled up. A fat red-faced man in a dirty- white Panama suit squeezed out, a union boss I would think. He wore large dark sunglasses with a pith helmet, cowboy boots on his feet. He was some dude! He bit and spat out the end of a cigar, lit up and faced the pushing mob. He pulled about twenty aside; then sent half on board and the rest to the wharf and warehouses. The losers silently idled away. Some of the stevedores went to the hold to load sacks in a sling net, then winched them overboard to the backpackers who lugged the sacks into the warehouses. The rats scurried about the backpacker’s feet, picking up wheat leaking from the sacking. They were almost barefoot wearing tire-tread soles thonged between their splayed toes. .

After fifteen days at sea, I longed to get off. To put in time, I recited aloud:

Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats,

Brown rats, black rats, grey rats, tawny rats

They fought the dogs and killed the cats,

And bit …………… (Voice from behind)

“The babies in their cradles - Browning, isn’t it?”

I turned and quipped, “You must be the Pied Piper?”

“Naw! I’se just the bosun, boss of the crew.”

“Where did you study Browning?”

“Kings College, Port of Spain, Trinidad.”

“ If I take a stick can I run those rats?”

“You be crazy Man! Threaten those beasts and they’d rush you. We doan vex rats and they doan vex us. It’s peaceful nowadays. The rats took over before I was born.”

“How do you know?”

“Man! --- I was born here. Wait about, I’ll get my double twelve and some bird shot.”

Back he came. I made shore without looking down. No gunshot.

 

(A year later)

At a seminar in Ed. Psych., a rat- psychology professor was ratting on about the

astonishing experiments with rats in stimulus- response research which had brought about

new teaching methods - Skinner’s stuff, trendy back then. Not me; I’d tried a

programmed-book package, saw it fail and chucked it. Faking profundity, I invented: “In

my opinion the research design for rat experiments is faulty because it fails factoring in

That rats are naturally smart and can think logically. Logic is not learned,

it’s already there. From your rat experiments, have you ever considered this?”

 

“I have never done rat experiments myself but I’ve read a lot. Have you studied rats?” he

said.

 

“Since I was a pup. All my life, but only in wild - only in the wild.” Then I proceeded

to tell my story about the wharf rats of Trujillo. The class was mine for the rest of the

lecture period.

 

On my way out I felt a clap on my shoulder.

“Mr. Lee, you’re talking through your hat, but you’re a dammed fine storyteller.