My Turn
E
Rats!
veryone has their remembered everything just as I did and even added favorite expletives. an item or two that I had either forgotten or repressed. When I was a child, I Yes, it really happened. always laughed when Rats also have a way of surprising me when I least the cartoon character, Charlie expect it. One day, I went upstairs in my farm shop Brown, got frustrated and to retrieve a joint of 4-inch PVC pipe that lay stored said, “rats!” He was a classy across the roof joists. I reached up over my head, guy, not given to cussin’. It is grabbed one end of the pipe and pulled it toward me. also funny that while “rats” This put the entire 10-foot pipe at a sharp downward seems benign on the one angle with the nearer end just inches from my face. hand, it represents a filthy, Looking inside, I saw that less than halfway up was an Robert destructive, disease vector on overfed Norway rat sliding helplessly. Royal the other hand. I loathe them! Fatso was trying to dig in with his heels but to no It is fall now, which marks avail. The slick walls of the pipe were like the iced the beginning of rat season, their migration from track of the Olympic bobsled. As he neared my face, I the fields. As crops are harvested and temperatures peered into his soulless eyes. The nasty abomination drop, those rodents whose homes were destroyed by popped out of the pipe before I could turn it loose. I combines, stalk shredders and plows will seek new felt his weight and the scratchy grip of his claws as he winter shelter in houses, sheds, storage bins and other ran across my shoulders and around my neck. Then, he structures. To combat the problem, some farmers keep leapt off and disappeared. “shop cats” around. Others put out traps and poisons. I trotted down the stairs, squatted at the water Some even allow snakes to coexist peacefully. hydrant and washed my face and neck. Next, I blew Every farmer has rat stoout my hair and shirt with ries. Some border on out“As he neared my face, I peered the air compressor nozrageous, but I’ve seen too zle. Finally, I sat down on into his soulless eyes.” much in my life to call anya bucket and a vigorous one a liar. Nothing surpriscathartic shiver rattled es me. Sadly, the stories often involve wiring damage to a through my being. I was embarrassed by the sound very expensive piece of farm machinery. I read in a U.S. I had made when the rat crawled around my neck. I Fish and Wildlife publication, it is estimated that rats didn’t know that unrepeatable expletive was part of my consume grain and destroy other property worth $19 vocabulary. Nor did I know my masculine voice box billion annually. I believe it. could contort itself to produce a frequency and decibel In the early ’70s, a few of my buddies and I went on that if sustained longer would have shattered nearby an overnight squirrel hunting trip. We were all about windows. 15 years old. Rather than pitch tents, we stayed in a Like weeds, insects and diseases, rats are just anothlong-abandoned cypress tenant house that turned out er farm pest we must work to control. They will to be overrun with rats. A large wooden cable spool never go away. I will now take liberty with William served as a table where we piled our groceries. After Faulkner’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech. I decline to supper, we retired to our cots, and the rats came out of accept the end of the rat …. It is easy enough to say that the walls en masse. I heard the boy on the cot next to the rat is immortal simply because he will endure: that me scream and kick a rat off his feet. I zipped up tight when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded in my sleeping bag and tried to ignore the noises. from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last When we woke the following morning, our gro- red and dying evening, that even then there will still be cery table was a mess. The bread was gone. All that one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible jaws remained was an empty plastic bag without so much gnawing on the electrical circuitry of a cotton picker. as a crumb. The milk jug was empty, too. It had a hole gnawed in the bottom, yet there was no puddle — Robert Royal underneath. Decades later, I brought up the memory Midnight, Mississippi of that night with one of my fellow trauma victims. He lastchancepltn@gmail.com Cotton Farming’s back page is devoted to telling unusual “farm tales” or timely stories from across the Cotton Belt. Now it’s your turn. If you’ve got an interesting story to tell, send a short summary to csmith@onegrower.com. We look forward to hearing from you.
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COTTON FARMING | NOVEMBER 2021
COTTONFARMING.COM
