When I was a child, we were taught  to take care of our siblings, our family, our cows, our community, our chickens, and defend  all of  the above against lions, tigers, and bears, and other things that go boom in the night that pose a threat to our common society. They were pretty much kept at bay.

The reptiles could usually be handled by Mamma’s custom built garden hoe that my daddy blacksmithed for her. That ol’ choppin’ hoe growed’ more snap beans and tomatoes and other garden truck than a fleet of John Deere tractors.

It also was pretty handy at dispensing rattle snakes, copperheads and moccasins, too.

Now, Sis and I were raised in a household along with one cat, two dogs, two rifles, three shotguns and one WW II German pistol. We were taught responsibility concerning those tools. The .22 rifle was for squirrel hunting; the .30 .40 Craig rifle was for deer, and the shotguns were for just about any things that moved, or didn’t move when you told it to.

The WWII souvenir pistol was mostly used as a paperweight because it had little significant use.
 
The next thing that the  .22 was  good for was to decimate the  rodent situation.

Down in all of that Delta flatland, with thousands of acres of cotton and soybeans for cover, them varmints  lived the life of Riley until the crops were harvested  and their cover  literally blown.

And at the mercy of the hawks and coyotes  and sub freezing temps, they would cause a critter swarm. We’d  have a lemming like influx of targets.

My  daughter  Rebecca was about three years of age and  we lived in a cypress cabin I’d  cobbled together {mostly out of spit and toilet paper} down near the Moccasin Bend Hunting Club and Tick and Chigger Emporium. We shot the little (unprintable) with  BB guns and accumulated  a pretty good bounty rate ‘till we ran out of  BB’s. Well they  just kepa’ commin.

It was worse than the Battle of New Ahleans.

We rigged deadfalls and booby traps fabricated from every imaginable convenience to be found in the average household of the day.  Some worked and some didn’t.

Meanwhile, our perimeters had been breached and they had obviously called up reinforcements. The traps had taken their toll,  but we had  by that time ‘runned out’ of peanut butter, and were gittin’ short on cheese and bananas.

Against my wife’s protests and to my daughter’s  delight, we broke out the field artillery, in the form of a  .22 caliber single action revolver and box of rat shot. That’s when the fun broke out.

At just about daylight we ran out of ammunition again. In desperation we started pulling the bullets out of squirrel rounds and filling the cases with Irish Spring bath soap. That hybrid form of ammo was lethal, but the range was limited to less than ten feet. We experimented with a .22 bolt action rifle which are known for greater range and accuracy, but the longer barrel caused a higher degree of friction, building up more heat and melting the soap before it reached the muzzle and in the final analysis, just  mostly blew some enormous and colorful soap bubbles inflicting little or no damage to the invaders; however, they all just sort of froze up for a few minutes like they were hypnotized  or something.

About that time my wife, having been kept up all night and  not a happy camper,  strolled into the war zone sans makeup or mascara, wearing nothing but a pair of fuzzy bunny house shoes and a Popeye look (“I’ve had all I can stand and I can’t stands no more”).

Well, them damn rats took one look at her and  scattered like Philistines after Goliath bit the bullet, and they ain’t showed back up yet.

If she’d only thought to  make her awful appearance about  ten hours earlier  we’d still have had ammunition (and cheese and bananas and peanut butter as well).

That is one advantage of having a really scary ol’ lady. She’ll keep the boogers off of you every now and then if you can just stand to look at her the rest of the time.

Mamma always did say, “If you can’t say something good about somebody don’t say anything at all.”
 
Well,  she might not have been much of a cook, and wasn’t  no better than a common alley cat at keeping house, but she sure was handy in a rat fight. Them varmints  would  have over run our lines or flanked us for sure if all that mean ugly hadn’t showed up like the Lone Ranger just in the nick of time. That’s all I’ve got to say.

Ricky Harpole

P. S. Since I didn’t mention any names, there is a better than average chance that both of my exes might come a gunnin’ for me so if I don’t show up next week you’ll know why.