Ratting

[Ed Normile]

I was working as a kid on a swine farm just east of Columbus Oh. they had rats everywhere. The farmer had to move an old feed trough, it was about twenty feet long, the front side in about two feet of pig feces laden mud water and the back against the barn side we were painting, just under an access window they would dump the feed through. He took his tractor and hooked up a chain and started to pull this trough out when a rat about 3 feet long appeared! This thing was pink and hairless and had about twenty little ones it was nursing, I guess it fed off the feed that would fall between the building and the trough, The rat was very slow moving, more like crawling dragging along all the swollen teats from nursing. He grabbed his rifle and shot it, this was a deer rifle, 30/06 and the first shot went through the rat and it kept moving, he shot it a second time and it rolled over twitching and revealed that on the way out the bullets had removed areas about the size of a baseball for the exit. Then he went up with a shovel and ending its existence. In the meantime the pigs had all gathered and ate the young rats. The day before a pig had died in the middle of the the feces swamp the pigs wallowed in, the farmers son was supposed to get the tractor and haul the thing away but before he got back the rest of the pigs had eaten their fallen comrade. It was almost a year before I could eat any thing to do with a pig again.

ed

[CatherineM]

I got my hound now. He has colapsed on the floor. He had a tiring day at doggy day care.