Because of a very poor foundation and the dirt cellar under the house, rodents were always a problem for us. We tried to ignore them but it was kind of hard to do. I used to lie awake at night listening to the mice gnawing in the walls and it drove me crazy. I hated mice then and still do. I think that is why after most of the kids had moved away from home Mom and Dad began to allow cats in the house. They helped control the mice.
I think this is one of their cats taking a nap in the wash basin.
Mom had another method of rodent control when we were younger. She put D-Con around the house and it helped with mice, but the pack rats were not affected by it. We started to notice that one tray of D-Con was always covered up with a stray T-shirt or something and then we noticed other little "treasures" that were squirreled away in that area. We determined that we had a pack rat in the house but couldn't catch it and couldn't poison it. The fact was confirmed one afternoon when we were playing in the house and a ball or something that we were playing with went under my bed. Jim went in and crawled under the bed to get it. To his great surprise, something ran across his body and darted out the bedroom door, through the kitchen and out of sight in the porch. Jim didn't really get a chance to see it but it felt big to him. I just saw a fleeting figure that looked like a cat but we didn't have cats in the house at that time (I was wishing we did at that point or maybe even a dog!). It had to be that pack rat and it was big. As Jim and I were discussing this memory a few days ago, we weren't sure if it was on this occasion or some days later when Mom finally decided she had had enough. We discovered that the rat had gone under the water heater and was cowering there while we all tried to get a look at it.
Did I tell you what a good gun handler my mom was? The first time my dad took mom deer hunting with him, she was the one who shot the deer. She was so excited when she saw the deer fall she started pounding her rifle on the ground in front of her as she jumped up and down and dad had to reminder her how dangerous it was not to mention it was very hard on the rifle. Anyway, Mom saw that rat under the water heater and said she was going to take care of him once and for all. She went and got the 22 rifle and got down on the floor and took aim at that rat. We were all warning her that it would be very bad if she shot the water heater, but I guess she had confidence in her rifle skills and fired anyway. To our great relief she got the rat and not the water heater. For quite a while afterwards we talked about the demise of that poor pack rat.
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