My grandfather once spoiled a family party by bringing a dead rat into the house. He was pretty proud he had trapped it in one of the barns.
The rest of the family was horrified. Me, too. I was just a kid. It cemented my fear of rats, which, by the way, has a name: musophobia.
I recalled that experience when I read Richard Wright’s novel Native Son. In the first scene, Bigger and his brother, Buddy, try to kill a rat in their city apartment. Their mother and sister were frantic about it. From Wright’s description, I know he had personal trouble with rats.
“He kicked the splintered box out of the way and the flat black body of the rat lay exposed, its two long yellow tusks showing distinctly. Bigger took a shoe and pounded the rat’s head, crushing it, cursing hysterically: ‘You sonofabitch!’ ”
More than any other animal, we associate rats with poverty.
Then, of course, rats make an unwelcomed appearance in George Orwell’s novel 1984. I felt for Winston Smith when he is confronted by O’Brien, a member of the Inner Party, who tells him “the worst thing in the world varies from individual to individual.” Of course, in Winston’s case, that worst thing was rats.
I could relate.
The rat at the family party wasn’t the only one concerning my grandfather, Manny. He hid dollar bills in the chicken barn, a few hundred, by my father’s telling. One day when he went to get the money, he discovered rats had eaten most of the bills.
The slum apartment I had in college was infested with rats. I heard them fighting in the walls. At night I suspected they made their way inside, and I finally had proof when a rat fell into an uncovered pot of beet soup on the stove. Large, red paw prints were everywhere in the kitchen. The landlord didn’t care. I did. I moved out. I haven’t made or eaten beet soup since.
In Mexico, where Hank and I rented a small house, rats raced across the tin roof and down the fireplace’s chimney. We stored our food in a thick wooden box we put inside the car, but still the rats searched. Hank kept a flashlight and hammer beside the bed. He blinded them with the light, and then smashed them with the hammer. The rats didn’t stop coming.
In a house we first rented when we moved to the hilltowns of Western Massachusetts, rats got through a drainage pipe in the basement and then into the kitchen. Our cat killed the first. Hank fixed it so more couldn’t get in. I heard him yelling in the basement when a rat stuck its head through the pipe’s hole.
When we lived in Taos, New Mexico, rats built nests in our stacked firewood. The clever beasts dragged leaves of cactus to the stacks and positioned them thorny side out to shield their nest. I removed the cacti, being careful as rodents in that area could have hantavirus.
Knock on wood, we haven’t lived with rats again. Mice? I don’t like them either. That’s one reason we have a cat. Our Maine coon cat, Stella, is officially the protector of our realm, and there are times she leaves mouse parts she doesn’t want to eat on the front welcome mat outside or a whole body as a gift. Early this morning, I accidentally stepped on the head of a mouse she left in the living room. Somehow the creature got inside. I kept my composure and got rid of the part she didn’t eat. Thanks, but no thanks.