LIONS and OTHER THINGS

RATS

RATS.
. . . .

In the middle of the night, the time of horror, of the rising of the dead, the unmentionables, the time when little children should be in dreamland ... thoughts creep into the mind. The thoughts we call nightmares. Nightmares that come from eating the wrong food or too much, possibly, too late a snack or sweet – the forbidden food after nine, a bad day, a scary story - the feast of nightmares!

There they were, hundreds of them running all over the room, everywhere, in the closet, in the drawers, under the bed, against the wall, their furry little bodies with the cold dead tails, wet twitching nose with the bottle brush-bristles and those little beady, black, dead eyes – rats, more rats, rats everywhere.

I lie under the blankets and with only my eyes sticking out, I scream and call my father. He comes and takes all the rats and puts them into a matchbox. Some rats jump out and try to run away, then he catches them and puts them into the matchbox, a few tails sticking out and then Father nails the matchbox to the wall. He says not to worry, they are all in the box and will not come out, then he leaves the room.

The rats opened the box and started to get out, I call my Father and the story repeats itself.

Eventually, sleep takes over, yet, the nightmare is remembered. Whether it had a meaning or was only a figment of my imagination, this is not clear, tho, the nightmare I can recall as clear as can be - to this day.

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If there is one thing that is not a welcome house guest, it is a rat. It can eat its way into or out of anything, well, almost anything. I have seen how it chewed a piece of lead as if it was a toffee, electrical cables are no obstacle and wood and cement are merely minor hindrances in its way if something is at the other side of these that it wants to eat.

So, a storeroom is the ideal place for Rattus Rattus to raise a family and breed to its rats content.

As a human and owner of that said storeroom, it is my sworn duty, nay, my pledge, to eradicate this pest, for that is what rats become if allowed to go their merry way. (Did Noah really take two into the Ark?)

Who has not heard of the 'Pestilence'? In the year so and so, not only once in history, did rats and their hence-men – fleas that carry the plague, try and wipe out the human race. Now, many a time they tried and great was their bounty. The bubonic plague, also known as the black death has killed millions in Asia during the 14th century and approximately a third of the European population, about twenty-five million. Then again in Britain, about 70 000 souls in the so-called 'Great Plague' around 1665. As recently as 1990 there was an outbreak of 'The Plague' in India and Mozambique.

With this in mind, Tickey my trusted Jack Russel and me would go rat-hunting in the store. The air-gun was the executioner as the rats ran across the rafters in the storeroom, when they fell Tickey would then make sure that the rat would be no more, with a few bone-crunching bites, that would be that.

In this storeroom, there was a chest of drawers, where all kinds of odds and ends were stored. Rats used to favor this chest and build nests in it and mess on all the items in the drawers. Slowly I started removing the drawers from the top, working my way down, as softly as I could, Tickey, standing at the ready, to pounce on any rat that came to be available. As I pulled out the last drawer, there ran out a 'gynormous rat', the grandfather of all rats, a massive monster!

Right up on the inside of my one trouser's leg.

I had on, one of those old baggy trousers that had a lot of space for everything and the crotch was a bit low down. The rat ran up and went to sit on the crotch of the trousers and I froze, hardly breathing, for a sudden move from my side might result in a bite ... and that is not a place to get bitten by a rat, especially not a rat!

After a little while, merely seconds, that felt like minutes, the rat made its merry way down the other leg.

Fortunately Tickey did not see the rat run ...