Back at my desk, I'd type up jokes and short stories and glance at the monitors until my next round. Once an outside monitor displayed a rat with ruler- straight tail trotting across the street toward our building. In this pre-digital age, our grainy, black-and-white monitors barely registered the outdoors. For a rat to show up, it had to be trophy-sized.
Around 6 AM, the morning security shift would clock in. I worked with really fascinating guys. Jerry my boss was a former Air Force military policeman who'd been stationed on remote Johnston Atoll out in the Pacific. He guarded the launch sites used in Operation Dominic, the last of the outer space thermonuclear tests back in the early sixties. Treeless and barren, the atoll provided little recreation. Jerry said the garrison split roughly into two categories: physical fitness fanatics and drinkers. (I think he leaned toward the healthy side.) In any case, Jerry watched as hydrogen bombs were fired up into space and detonated, blossoming in the pitch-black sky like eerie buds.
At the factory, Jerry had an assistant named Ski. Ski was a former LA cop, fired for pulling some prank on a supervisor. He had a lawsuit going, claiming unlawful termination. I couldn't comment on the "unlawful" part, but Ski did have a very droll sense-of-humor. He'd served in the 26th Marines at Khe Sanh and had his own adventures with large rodents.
During Khe Sanh, Ski and the other Marines were pinned down by heavy North Vietnamese rocket and artillery fire. No al fresco dining there. Living in bunkers, they ate and dumped their trash on the floor. This bonanza drew in large rats from the surrounding forest who disturbed the men's meager sleep and occasionally nestled between their legs for warmth. (Charming.) One day, the troops had enough. Someone squirted lighter fluid on a rat, while someone else lit the critter on fire with a Zippo cigarette lighter. Other bunkers joined in. Soon the perimeter was alive with flaming rats, falling rockets and laughing men.
It made my rat woes seem weakish by comparison.
Years later, I spotted a small article in the LA Times. Ski was mentioned along with the words "settlement" and "estimated million dollars." Whatever the amount, I'll bet it could buy a tanker truck of lighter fluid. (Image: hotrodswag.com)
4 comments:
We had rats living in our house for a while. They paid no rent. They ate our food. They were sloppy. Wait...I think I have them confused with my borther-in-law.
Anyway, we had rats in the house.
Dousing them with lighter fluid and setting them ablaze was our first thought. But then the first fiery rat went scampering back into his hole, and up into the woodwork, and before we knew it, LAFD had seven fire trucks on the scene.
Terminix proved less costly. Of course, after they sprayed, they killed our cat and the neighbor's dog and all birds and other wildlife within a 100 yard radius.
For us, the way to keep out rats was chicken wire over all small entrances.
It worked!
Wiring up the small entrances is good.
Also, if you have a fruit tree, policing up the fallen lemons, etc.
Basically, rats fear—but don't respect—humans. Like many animation execs., they are relentlessly busy.
My father had a similar story of when he and my mother first got married. They lived in a small apartment in a town call Ocean Springs, (hence obliterated by hurricane Katrina, to what extent I'm not sure.) But he said they were awakened in the middle of the night by scampering and a sudden significant weight on my fathers chest. He flung the sheets off, turned on a lamp, and stood in the center of their bed faced with a veritable swarm of the icky things each the size of a small dog, with not but said lamp to fend them off with. I'm not sure how much of this is half remembered or half sleep induced exaggeration, and I tend to question the wisdom of using your only light source as a potential weapon, but I tend to believe him given what I have seen of rats.
When in doubt, start swinging.
I trapped one at my old house that was so husky the trap only pinned its shoulders, leaving it free to flap/clack around until I dispatched it to rodent Valhalla.
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