Rats!
We had a horse in our old barn when I was around twelve years old. My older brother was the owner but I managed to do work in the barn shoveling manure and feeding and such so I could ride when my brother wasn’t. It worked out great because he was old enough to notice girls and that took up a lot of his time so the horse got a lot of my time.
We kept the winter hay in the loft and the oats in a barrel by the stall. It fell to me to do most of the horse chores in the winter because of my deal, chores for riding. One of the chores that was a bit out of the norm was shooting rats. I don’t know much about rats but they seemed to go hand in hand with horse barns. Our neighbors had horses and they had rats in their barn too. My brother and I had become proud owners of a Sears’s .22 bolt action rifle and we decided that .22 shot shells were just the medicine for our barn rats. It was not unusual for us to be shooting in our barn back in those days even though we actually lived just inside the city limits.
People were used to us kids running around with B-B guns and .22’s or even shotguns during the hunting seasons. Shooting in the barn with a .22 using shot was almost unnoticeable. I actually got pretty good at hitting the little vermin on the run. I would leave the rifle out in the barn by the door so it was handy for rat duty anytime, day or night. In the early predawn dark when I entered I would grab the gun and flip the light switch on. The rats would scamper to their holes and I would shoot if I could.
The winter dragged on and I fell into a routine for the chores and the rat population dropped to a point where I didn’t have to be too vigilant. I suppose that I was even a bit tired of the work and let my guard down. I finished my schoolwork from the day and while my mother was making pies in the kitchen one evening I went to the barn to do the evening duty. I absentmindedly slid the wooden cover off the oat barrel and reached in for the scoop to feed the horse.
A piercing pain shot up my hand and for a split second I was unsure of what was happening to me. Seconds later I withdrew my aching hand to see a rat the size of a German Sheppard firmly attached to my finger! I slammed it against the wall but it was securely dug in and there seemed to be nothing I could do to detach it. The only thought in my head was “Mom will know what to do!” so I ran screaming from the barn, bursting into the kitchen with a rat hanging on my bloody finger.
My mother was the picture of calmness and fortitude as she simply grabbed my arm and laid it and the rat on the table and smacked that rascal with her rolling pin! Even in death the demon didn’t let go easily but my brave mother pulled its teeth from my finger and dropped it in the garbage can. Instant relief and a trip to the doctor for a tetanus shot and bandage made the whole affair much more bearable.
My rat hunting days were no longer a petty chore; they were an obsession for vengeance. I no longer tromped blissfully unaware into the dark barn and I definitely never stuck my hand blindly into the oats barrel again. I hunted the rats with a renewed passion but they seemed to know I meant business and they were rather scarce after that incident. To this day I hate rats and they know it!
Chris