Rats
They are a never ending problem, but not as bad as they used to be back sixty or more years ago. They would come down from the fields as the autumn got colder and into the stacks and bays filled with shoffs of wheat and oats, the stacks outside were thatched and for moisture would work there way up onto the top of the rick and make holes in the new thatching.
It was often ringed with small mesh wire netting while the threshing machine was working on it so as to make sure we caught as many as we could, a lot jumped from the top as the thatch was being removed, all us kids would be armed with nut stick with a knob on the end, and great excitement as they run and dodged about.
A good dog, my dog caught most but he almost came unstuck when he picked up a rat just as a big knobbed stick came down heavy and hit him on his head and knocked him out as he killed the rat. He came round after a short while and was back at work after a few days.
The sacks of wheat had to be stacked two high in rows apart so the cats could get between them, failure to do this, within a few days, while waiting transport rat would nibble hole always seemed to be in the bottom of the sack. When they are loaded sacks with holes would be under weight, and would have to be re-bagged and re-weighed, a lot of time spent for not stacking the sacks open in rows.
Just occasionally, a rat has come into the house, and the one I relate back to happed mid afternoon, and while we were having a break from work having a cup of tea.
While we were all sitting talking a rat crept round the corner of the house and ran in through the open back door, one of our group saw in the corner of his eye, what he thought was a rabbit. Mid roars of laughter it took him a while to convince the rest of us of what he claimed to see. Once we had taken him seriously we put our cups down and proceeded to search the house and the rooms that it could have hopped into. It was in a down stairs bedroom that we eventually detected some movement, as it scuttled under a bed, the under other furniture, when it ran across the room and under a wardrobe we saw for ourselves that it was in fact a large rat.
Right we thought we had got it cornered, all exits from the wardrobe were covered, and then one of us got down on hands and knees with a walking stick to flush it out. But to our surprise a rat could not be seen, it seemed a mystery where it had disappeared to, as we had guarded the wardrobe from when we saw it run under there. It had not got inside the wardrobe, unless it had suddenly made a rat hole into it while we waited, then realised it had clawed it's way up between the wall and the back of the furniture.
On assessing what height and roughly where it was, the door was opened the cloths parted and a large size eleven boot stamped heavily on the spot where it was thought to be. The rat slide down the wall to the floor crushed and dead, we moved the wardrobe forward, only to see a long slick of blood all down the wall and on the back of the wardrobe which had to be cleaned up quickly before it stained and dried.
If it had not been seen at that moment, we could have been living with it for weeks, plenty of places for it to dig in for a long stay, under floor boards in the cellar, and in the loft roof space.
A rat is a rat is a rat for the cat,
The dogs got my dinner n' he's getting fat,
When the water reaches the upper level, follow the rats.
Claude Swanson (1862-1939