Author: Ronald Guenther

Written: December 20th, 2013

First of all, that house was full of termites and ants and they were eating away at the whole structure. It is a wonder that the whole house did not collapse, but somehow, it didn’t. I always got a bad rap on that. I never brought in any termites and besides there were many different ants’ nests in there besides the ones I brought in. That house was in such bad shape that in the last years that the folks lived there, they did not even insure it. Thus, when the time came to see if the people up there wanted a fire district, they were against it. It was put to a vote. Ed will have to correct me on the final tally, but my recollection was the vote was 164 to 3 in favor of a fire district. Who, you may ask, voted against the fire district. Well, it was pop, mom and Uncle Ed who happened to be living at home. So, the structure was in bad shape.

Next, we periodically had a real rats problem. As long as the skunks lived under the house, there was no problem. The skunks pretty much handled the rats. But rats were out there lurking all the time, even early on when we moved in. Once, Bob, Louise and I discovered a rats nest that had a bunch of cute little rats in it. We decided we wanted those cute little hairless things for pets so we gathered them up, put them into my hat and brought them to mom. Mom screamed and ran out to the chicken yard and fed them to the chickens.

So, we had a rat problem periodically and once when I came home from college, I was about a sophomore at the time, we were in the midst of one. Bob and I were lying in bed just talking. Our room was upstairs at the time and the chimney went up through our room and kept us cold because we always had to have a fire going. I looked up at said, Bob, there is a rat peeking out around the chimney. Give me the shotgun said Bob. Well, we had grandpa’s old twelve gauge shotgun and a bunch of good shells for it, I handed it to Bob and he watched and when the rat peeked out again, he fired away and just to make sure he hit the thing, he fired again. We heard a scream from downstairs. “Help, I’ve been shot! Don’t shoot again! Pop was really upset over that. If the walls had not been so porous, those bb-s would never have penetrated. But as I noted, the walls were porous. Most of the bb-s just rained down onto the floor. They did not hurt anybody. Well, said Brother Bob, I better go down and see what happened, you check out and see if you can find the rat. Well, the rat had really been blasted to smithereens. All I found was a little fur and some blood spots, hardly enough to worry about, cleaning up that mess was no problem. Meanwhile, Brother Bob went down and a few minutes later came up just laughing. Nobody was hurt, he said, and so we both laughed and turned over and went to sleep. There were a few bb-s buried in his back and arm, there was no trouble getting them out, although pop made a big deal of it. Mom didn’t say much at the time, got a broom and swept up the droppings, and we all went to sleep.

Later the skunks came back and took care of the rats. Cats usually will not take on a rat, rats fight and bite, but Skunks, or more precisely, civet cats, really go after them. I doubt whether those bb-s even drew blood. At any rate, pop went to work the next day. There was also no infection. Mom dug out what was there and rubbed his back with alcohol.

We had two shotguns when I was growing up, the 12 gauge, which was really a good shotgun and a small 410. That had belonged to grandma. She did not like to chop the heads of chickens and so she would go out and shoot them with her 410. They would be museum pieces now, but Bob took them to Alaska and they never came back. So, that was the whole story. It was all the fault of the house and according to pop, to the ants. He never mentioned the termites or the ants that I did not import.

P.S.

There seems to be still some question about the rate story. Bob shot the rat from his bed which was on the south side of the house next to the upstairs window. So, the angle was such that the trajectory would go right toward pop’s bed, all right. That part I get. He got off two quick shots with the twelve gauge. I do not think we even had any shells for the 410. There was no smell, because what was left of the rat, I cleaned up and threw out the window. What I never understood is how mom could have spent hours picking out the bb-s. The first shot could have penetrated and made somewhat of a hole and the second one could have blasted on through, all right, but I always thought it was just debris falling on the bed. On the other hand, Louise was there, I was not. I never went downstairs. If Louise said mom spent hours picking out the bb-s, we have to take her word for it. She would have seen that first hand. But pop always was under covers and had pajama tops on so they could not have penetrated too much. But that twelve gauge was powerful and those shells were full of buckshot. But just came up kind of laughing and when I asked what was going on, he just said, “I shot Ol’ pa.” There was no elaboration.

So, here is something else, once when we were younger Bob and I asked mom what we should call her and our father and she said, we could call her mother or mom, but she preferred mama. Under no circumstances should we call her ma. And we could call our father dad or daddy or father but under no circumstances should we call him pa. There was a book and movie out about then called “ma and pa Kettle” and she did not want to be in their category. After all, she had her dignity. She had called her own mother mom and her father daddy. The Perrys called their father Pappy (the a is pronounced like the a in cat). So, both Bob and I went along with that. I called our mother mom and our father pop. Of course in public and around other kids and sometimes just for the sake of being different, I did call him dad. Brother Bob on the other hand called mom, ma, and he called pop, Ol’ Pa. So, you see, neither of us said ma and pa. Bob was on the ragged edge of legality, of course, which was his way, so when he came upstairs and smiled and said, I shot ol’ pa, that was just about what you would expect him to say. After some laughing and good humor, we went to sleep. So it all went. In the end it all turned out OK.