Dancing with Rats.

My wife walked slowly backward into the living room, her shaking hand pointing and said, ” Massive rat in the garden……” A bit like Chief Brody in Jaws when he sees the Great White up close and personal. I jumped up, well slowly rose, knees popping, bones creaking and had a look but the blighter had done a runner. That’s all we need… Rats.

” It was huge! Big as a dog!”            

” Are you sure it wasn’t actually a dog?”

“No it was too close to the ground”.

” A sausage dog?”

She held her hands apart, like a fisherman telling a tall tail. ” That big!”

Wow that was big, the length of a a ruler, about thirty centimetres. And that was without the tail. Now I love all of God’s creatures ( apart from moths…..The big ones that fly at you in summer and go for the jugular ) but what is the point of a rat? All they do spread disease and eat everything in sight. I suppose they serve some purpose in the chain of life but I can’t think of any. The thing that bugged me was rat. Plural. Now these creatures are notorious for breeding. If you see one then let’s face it all his friends are hiding, like paparazzi or should I say paparatszi……get it?…Get it??

She’s seen another one since and I saw a furry beast the other day. All normal size. The one I saw breezed into the garden, sniffed the air and did a stop start to the bird feeder. I ran out and shouted,”OY!” and leapt up and down to scare it off. Now obviously it doesn’t speak English and I don’t speak Rat but the cheeky bugger just looked at me with those little beady eyes, danced around the bird feeder like a crazed maypole dancer then darted under a tree. So I did what anybody would do these days. I asked Google. ‘How to get rid of rats from the garden.’ To my amazement it says they’re not keen on chilli powder. So my wife sprinkled it all around the garden. However these rats must be Mexican because they loved it. In fact I’m sure I saw one wearing a sombrero. The birds weren’t too keen though. I’ve never seen a fire breathing tit before.

We live about a mile or so from the docks. They stretch right along the River Humber. It’s great for us to catch the Ferry, go across the North Sea to Holland or Belgium. Not so great because where there is a dock there’s a rat. Usually lots of them. Dock rats are bigger, stronger and scarier than the normal rat but we never see them. So that’s all we need in the garden, a huge rodent that you can put a saddle on. How do I get rid of this super rat? Can’t use a rat trap incase some other poor creature gets stuck in it and can’t put poison down, so then what? Air pistol? I’m not a trained sniper and the thought of catching something in the cross hairs then squeezing the trigger isn’t pleasant. Or crouching behind the dustbin for twelve hours like Rambo waiting for that big sleek beast to appear doesn’t appeal either to be honest. A catapult maybe? I haven’t had one since I was a kid and I was a crap shot then. What about a flute? Like the Pied Piper of Hamelin…I can’t play any instruments but I can whistle. A cat! Get a cat. Mind you the neighbours have cats and thinking about it they use our back garden as a huge litter tray. The cats not the neighbours. The felines have disappeared though… Maybe murdered by the mutant moroding super rat? What am I going to do?

So.. back to Google. Rats are everywhere apparently. As you read this one will be outside your house, sniffing away, unseen. A group of them is called a Mischief which is quite fitting. Cities are overwhelmed with them. We go to London once in a while, see a show in the west end. The gleaming pictures you see of its historical places are great but go in the next street where rubbish bags are piled high usually with dancing rats all around them. And now they are getting bigger, and bolder, especially since the various lockdowns. Thoughts of bubonic plague and black death starting in my garden really don’t seem very pleasant. Before we know it I’m covered in festering boils shouting “Unclean! Unclean!” So this beast has to go…..

The waiting game begins..man against beast…one of them highly intelligent….the other….me.

Nothing…not one sighting in days. Even the cats have made an appearance. Never been so happy to see them spraying up the wall. Maybe the creatures have gone back to where they came and that big boy has found somewhere more fruitful. Summers coming, days sat in the garden, lovely, lovely sun. The last thing I want is a rat trotting around when we have a BBQ. Not a good look as your chewing down on a burger and a beast jumps on your shoulder looking for a nibble. Mind you it’s not a bad way of getting rid of some of those people that you don’t want there. You know the ones. They bring a bottle of the cheapest plonk then eat and drink everything in sight. In fact I might buy a pet rat and train it to run around near certain people and they’ll soon head off into the sunset.

So for now all is quiet…or we haven’t seen a thing anyway…I’d love to think the super rat saw me and I terrified him forever. Told all his ratty pals to avoid the garden with the crazy screaming man bouncing round like a demented kangaroo. If not, and he brings his big friends back, I’m out of here!