Thoughts From the Front Porch

Rats—the perfect game animal!   Nobody cares if you kill ‘em, you don’t have to field dress ‘em because nobody in his right mind eats rats, and the world is a better place without ‘em.   A good, old-fashioned rat-killing  is also a prestigious social event among those who appreciate the positive aspects of this little-known sport.

I’d been invited by some of my Walker County in-laws to participate in a major rat extermination, that night’s site being two egg factory houses holding upwards of twenty thousand caged chickens apiece.   These poor birds labored endlessly at converting grain & water into eggs, all the while beak-to-tail with several of their sisters in cramped wire cages suspended above the floor.

Each egg rolled down the sloping cage bottom onto a conveyor belt, thence into a sorting room at the end of the building.  Rats love a deal like this; plenty of food & drink, theirs for the taking.  Obviously, food eaten by rats is not made into eggs, which they also eat, so it soon becomes profitable to host a rat-killin’.

We gathered on Coy’s farm about 7PM.  He provided the ammunition, which consisted of .22 caliber rat-shot.  These are like miniature shotgun shells, deadly to rats at close range but fairly safe at a distance and not overly damaging to surrounding property.  Or at least that’s the theory.

First thing I noticed upon getting out of our car was an overpowering smell of ammonia plus another kind of stink only a huge mass of chickens can produce.  Within seconds my nose began to run and my eyes watered uncontrollably, plus I had an urge to puke that stayed with me until sometime the next day.  I mentioned the smell to Coy, and asked how he & his family could live so close to such an operation.  He grinned widely, and said, “Smells like money to me, son.”

The lights had been turned off prior to our arrival.   There were about  a dozen of us hit-men present, so Coy divided us up into one large group whose job it was to enter one end of the house, wait for a section of lights to be turned on, then shoot anything that moved on the floor.  Two others were stationed outside on each side to ambush any rats that managed to escape.   The cages were mounted about a yard above than the floor in order to allow a scraping machine to plow out all the chicken crap periodically, so there was plenty of room to spot our prey and waste them.   When everyone was in place, Coy switched on the first bank of lights.

Words can’t adequately describe what ensued.  Rats were all over the place, even among our feet.  We opened up with everything we had.   What a god-awful racket;  dozens of powerful rounds fired almost in unison, followed by scattered shots and rebel yells.   Thousands of tiny lead pellets struck the floor and kicked up a small cloud of fragmented chicken crap.  Rats were running everywhere, trying to escape Vermigeddon.

I think we may have actually killed one or two, but the rest ran deeper into the chicken house or made good their escape through ventilation spaces under the walls, only to be met by yet another volley of fire from our end-men outside.  Coy just shook his head incredulously at this bunch of city boys bearing deadly weapons, and urged us to move quickly to the next section.

And so it went for at least half an hour;  lights on, shoot, advance, repeat until we’d moved all the way through a structure that was at least two city blocks long.  By the time we reached the far end our aim had improved remarkably.  The floor was littered with dead and dying rats.   This process was repeated in the other house with even better results, and our snipers outside had a field day.

Having seriously decimated their population, Coy decided to take care of several smart rats which had escaped to the safety of their holes.   He knew his vermin well;  all rat burrows have at least two entrances.  Coy crammed a hosepipe into a hole that was central to many others, and thus ran them all full of water.   All us marksmen gathered in a wide circle around the rat village, awaiting their inevitable flight to avoid drowning.

We’d see the water begin to agitate in a hole,  with one or more rats soon to follow.  Each fleeing varmint absorbed several loads of rat shot apiece as soon as his head popped above the water. Coy urged us to let them get completely out of the holes before firing lest the hole become jammed with dead rats,  which was a bit more sporting anyway.  We repeated this slaughter over at least a dozen underground rat villages before finally calling it a night after expending all the furnished ammunition.

More than a thousand rounds had been fired, but Coy was grateful for this small expense compared to what those rats had been eating.  All told, we counted about 150 dead, many more escaping with mortal wounds.  One even swam halfway across the chicken crap lagoon before getting shot to pieces and sinking out of sight.  We declined retrieving his body.  Surprisingly, not a single chicken was killed, and only one of our Rat Patrol had been wounded slightly by ricocheting pellets.

Later that night, several pairs of shoes got thrown away upon our arrival home, and lots of clothes spent the night on porches, our wives rightfully refusing to allow such an incredible stench indoors, but by then we’d gotten almost used to it and hardly noticed anymore, possibly because most of us were full of beer.

Some time later, I asked Coy when we might do this again.   He shook his head, and told me he’d be looking for much better riflemen next time, as every single one of his expensive, high-pressure water hoses had been shot full of holes.

Views From Benny Hill is a series by Jerry Smith

Views From Benny Hill