Rats

RATS


Some of the best memories I have take place in Kentucky. Collectively, I have spent less than five years of my life in this wonderful state, yet I still consider it my home.

This particular true story, with maybe a few embellishments because of my fading memory, takes place when I was all of six years old. My brother Jim was nine.

The year prior my mother had given my father an ultimatum; either move us from the down town Detroit apartment where we currently imprisoned ourselves, or she would take us and move to Kentucky. He didn’t, so she did.

And that’s how we ended up there.

I had barely remembered my grandfather, being all of three when we had moved to Detroit. My father had acquired a job at Ford Motor Company, and we tumbled along with him, like the obedient nuclear family we were. Now I was back in Kentucky, getting to know my family, and that eccentric stranger I called Papaw.

Which brings me to the subject of this story, rats.

We moved to Kentucky just as the new school year started. I spent my whole first grade in a huge eight room house that had been converted to a school. My first grade room had dull wood floors, a black board, actually made from black slate, and an outhouse that the whole school shared. The outhouse had real toilets, but was separated from the school. In the cooler months, the older girls would take balloons and fill them up with the gas that emanated from a broken pipe next to the radiator. The balloons would float. Looking back, I realize how horribly dangerous this was! Also, I don’t remember the outhouse having a sink to wash hands.

After the winter months were over, spring and summer would attack our little Van Lear town like a swarm of bees. It was sudden, and it was brutal. The school house had a large front porch, which provided much needed shade. The girls would play jump rope games and hand clapping games. One of these sticks out in my mind:

Miss Suzy had a baby
She named him Tiny Tim
She put him in the bathtub
To see if he could swim, swim, swim,

He drank up all the water
He ate up all the soap
He tried to eat the bathtub
But it wouldn’t go down his throat, throat, throat,

Miss Suzy called the doctor
Miss Suzy called the nurse
Miss Suzy called the little old lady
With the alligator purse, purse, purse,

In came the doctor
In came the nurse,
In came the little old lady
With the alligator purse, purse, purse,

Out went the doctor
Out went the nurse
Out went the little old lady
With the alligator purse, purse, purse.

I know there are a myriad of versions of this very handclapping rhyme, but this is the version I remember from my early days. Sometimes we would clap the rhythm, sometimes the girls would act out the story as they sang the rhyme. Any way you look at it, we had fun!

In those days you walked to school.

In those days you walked to the local grocery store during lunch and bought square suckers of cinnamon candy to satisfy a sweet tooth.

In those days, teachers were allowed to spank students, and we respected them for it.

In those days, animals were not elevated to the level of humans, and experiments on nutrition and development were conducted in my brother’s class using rats.

White rats, to be precise, and they were enormous.

At the end of the year, the rat they had fed only candy, sweets and fatty foods had surprisingly gone skinny and malnourished, and the rat they fed veggies, eggs, and grains had grown to be a sleek shiny creature that could almost be called beautiful.

At the end of the year, my brother walked home from school with his britches rolled up, one cage in one hand, and one cage in the other. If my mother’s jaw had been unhinged, it would have fallen off her face. She was not too happy about my brother’s adoptive spirit!

She made us keep the rats out in the tool shed, for some strange reason.

My brother and I thought it would be a good idea to put them together, they looked so lonely. What we didn’t know, was we had a female and a male rat. I will let you fill in the blanks. In those days kids were sheltered from a lot of things, and we thought they were just fighting, so we eventually separated them.

The scrawny rat soon started getting very fat, even though my brother forgot to feed them for two days and they began to chew their own tails. My mother somehow knew what was going on and made the decision to take the rats to our papaws house.

Papaw was an interesting character. He loved animals, and always had an interesting menagerie. It changed every time I visited. My favorite was the chicken coop, and the “Bantie” chickens. They were miniature versions of the normal chickens and the tiny roosters were colorful and mean as heck. The Bantie hens lay eggs that were perfect size for a young kids breakfast, and we consumed many of those little white treasures.

At one point, Papaw had a coop full of chickens, two ponies, several cats, ducks, two mangy dogs, a raccoon, and a squirrel monkey that loved to eat katydids. (don’t ask!) My mother decided it was time to add to his menagerie.

My mother didn’t drive, so we had to walk along the railroad tracks in back of our house for a couple miles until we reached Papaw and Mamaw’s house. We were ripe for adventure as we trudged up the hillside carrying our treasures. Mom held a brown paper “poke” containing two bottles of Pepsi, a lemon cut in two pieces, and some chunk bologna with saltine crackers.

I carried the small cage with the female rat, and my brother carried the cage with the humongous male, with the half-eaten tail. We had never named them, which was fortunate considering upcoming events.

Halfway through our journey by the railroad tracks, we stopped by an overhanging rock to have a snack. The Pepsi tasted so good to my parched mouth. The bologna was a little wilted, and the crackers had gone soft from humidity, but we ate them like we hadn’t eaten in days.

A little ways up the road, we saw a small waterfall trickling down a large outcropping of rock. Even when it wasn’t raining, the underground springs would flow, and the water was absolutely delicious. We stopped and splashed water on our faces. I got a little enthusiastic and slipped on the mossy wet rocks, falling on my six year old bottom, soaking my clothes. I burst into tears and my mom tried to console me. My brother in all his brotherly wisdom laughed at me for my clumsiness. I was mad, but later he got his comeuppance!

About three-quarters of the way to Papaw and Mamaw’s house, we had to pass by a steep drop-off. My mom was deathly afraid of heights, and the sharp decline to the valley below gave her the creeps. She somehow managed to grab my brothers hand and mine, while still holding on to the brown bag. It was hard for him to hold the rat cage without both hands, and one of his was occupied by my mother’s overprotective white knuckle grip.

We heard a train coming and had to get to the other side of the tracks, by the precipice. My mother mistakenly thought my brother would plummet over the edge and she jerked him closer to her, making him lose his grip on the cage. It rolled to the bottom of the hill, white male rat and all. It came to an abrupt stop at the bottom of the hill, crashing open and releasing the rat, unscathed.

My brother just looked at the rat as it scurried further down in the valley, and his chin began to tremble. He willed himself not to cry and we made the rest of the journey in absolute silence, sucking on our lemon halves and hoping to get to Papaw’s soon.

When we finally got there, exhausted, and me with my underwear chafing me because my clothes were still damp, Mamaw had dinner fixed for us. My cousins Randy, Roger, Deano and Teresa were there, as well as my Aunt Ailene and my mischievous older cousin, Ronnie. My brother instantly forgot his rat losing woes and ran off with Ronnie to cause more mischief. I sat on the front porch with my cousins around me, admiring my white, fat female rat with the partially chewed tail.

Dinner was wonderful, as usual. My Mamaw was a great cook and she had prepared gravy, biscuits, fried chicken, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, cornbread, soup beans (pinto beans for you non southerners)and green beans that had been cooked into submission.

My Mamaw always cut up a mushmelon (cantaloupe) in peeled, half moon slices, and always had some kind of cake or pastry baked. This particular dinner, we had pineapple up-side-down cake. She always had sliced tomatoes and green onions on the table, as side dishes of sorts.

After dinner, the adults sat around smoking, and drinking coffee. My mom would sometimes play the piano. My Aunt Ailene played the piano too, and we all could sing. We were a musical bunch! The kids ran around outside in the heavy Kentucky air, catching fire flies and dodging the pranks of Cousin Ronnie.

That night, he put wallpaper paste on the bushes beside Papaws house, and told us it was monster drool. We believed him. We could see the little glowing eyes of the monsters (which in reality were lightning bugs) One time, he took some sewing thread and wove it between the branches of Papaws cherry trees and told us it was a giant spider web. He was a character, my cousin Ronnie, but he grew to be a wonderful person, and became my favorite cousin!

This is where memory fails me. I don’t remember walking back home, nor do I remember staying the night. I could only assume my Uncle Buddy drove us home, because we didn’t see the rat again for a whole week.

One fine summer morning, just as the sun peeked through the windows, my mom shook me awake. She woke my brother and we got dressed. Half asleep, we hurriedly wolfed down a bowl of Raisin Bran, and piled in Uncle Buddy’s car.

My mom was very vague as to where we were going, but I recognized the well worn road to Papaws house. Why were we going there at such an hour of the morning?

When we got there, Mamaw had breakfast ready. We had already eaten, but it was rude to refuse offered food. We picked at our eggs and biscuits, until the adults told us it was okay to go outside.

On the back deck, (I would have liked to call it a porch, but it wasn’t covered) Papaw took my hand and led me to the little house out back, where he had hung the cage containing the fat female rat. He lifted my scrawny 6 year old body, and let me peer in the cage. There underneath the Large white rodent were several squirming pink lima beans… At least that’s what they looked like. It took my mind a moment to register, but the rat had just given birth to twelve squirming pink babies! I asked Papaw to get the cage down, but he told me the Mommy had to have time with her babies alone, so they would be healthy.

In no time at all, the babies and momma crowded the cage. The babies were all white with pink eyes, just like their mother and father, and they were cute as all get-out! Papaw decided to make them a bigger cage.

When my Papaw decided to do something, he REALLY did it. He was a skilled carpenter, among many other things, and soon had a hutch made for the rats that would have rivaled any zoo enclosure!

The mom and babies loved their new bigger home, and the Alpo dog food my Papaw fed them. There was only one thing wrong with his game plan. There were male and female rats in the litter, and rats don’t discriminate with whom they breed.

In two months, the rats had gone through three cycles of breeding and inbreeding, and their cage once again was crowded. Some of the rats had missing tails, no eyes, deformed limbs and weird looking fur, thanks to the rampant inbreeding. They became a smelly, writhing mass of expensive upkeep, so Papaw decided to get rid of them.

One fine day, just before school started, they dismantled the hutch from its stand and loaded it in the back of my Uncle Buddy’s pick-up truck. The intent was to take them high on the hilltop, release them, and hope for the best.

All was going according to planned, as my Uncle Buddy chugged up the rough unpaved hillside road. The hutch banged and lurched in the back, and my Uncle opened the sliding back window of the pick up, so he could get more air. About a mile into the journey, he felt a tickle on his right leg. He looked down to see a juvenile white rat, looking up at him with its whiskers twitching


The hutch had jarred open and the rats had escaped, pouring into the driver’s cab like a swarm of bees.

My Uncle Buddy was scared of rats to begin with, and you can imagine his reaction! With out thinking, he escaped the cab of the truck, and stood there as the pick-up made its clandestine journey. It left the confines of the narrow mountain road and tumbled gracefully down the hillside, the open hutch clanging and banging its descent. When it finally stopped moving, the rats took off to their new free lives.

I imagine after the adrenaline wore off he had a good laugh. It sure made a funny family story, one which was told often and with a lot of embellishment, probably like mine!

My Papaw never again kept rats, and to the best of my knowledge, there is no thriving population of white rats in the West Van Lear area.

THE END