American Agriculturist, August 9, 1924 
Rat Proofing 
r 
91 
By Harry Harrison Kroll 
W ELL, sir, I am willing to bet you a 
five-dollar hat, and a ten-cent 
cigar in the bargain, that that old blue 
Tom-cat of mine will clean your corn- 
crib of rats in two weeks at the outside.” 
The voice was my father’s. He was 
sitting out on the front porch, his cob 
pipe in his mouth, arguing with Tidd 
Sikes, our neighbor, on the relative merits 
of our blue Tom-cat over Todd’s per¬ 
sonally invented rat trap. I couldn’t 
see either of the old boys; but I had heard 
them argue before. The rag-chewing 
ended just as I thought it would. 
“Very well, sir!” came Todd’s high, 
cracked treble. “I take vour bet. And 
I go you one better and make the seegar 
a twenty-five center!” He delivered 
this ultimatum w'ith all of the dignity that 
an elderly, outraged gentleman may 
bring to a thin, antiquated treble. 
Now, so far as the Tom-cat was con¬ 
cerned, I had never seen him catch a rat 
1 'in his life. He had been part of the family 
circle for ten or twelve years; and to my 
knowledge had never manifested the 
least interest in anything dead or alive 
except the saucer of cream mother placed 
night and morning for him behind the 
stove. While not so well acquainted with 
the habits of Todd’s rat-trap, I had my 
doubts about it. The contraption was 
[ made out of a goods box, with passage¬ 
ways leading from the four sides into the 
| center, where they terminated in a nail 
keg. This keg, according to Todd's 
formula, was filled with water when the 
machine was in action. The inventor 
averred that he had often taken the 
keg out, after a night in the crib, filled 
I to the first rim with drowned rats. 
P ERSONALLY, I had always main¬ 
tained that there is just one really 
I efficient way of dispensing with rodent 
boarders, and that is to build rat-proof 
cribs. But father always said “Bosh ” at 
the suggestion, adding, “Rats don’t hurt 
us none to speak] of. 01d_ Tom always 
I keeps the rats caught up, anyway.” 
“You mean he keeps a pint of cream a 
| day caught up,” I corrected. 
“No,” father would reply irritabiy. 
| “I mean just what I say. Tom catches 
up all the rats, or most of them, on the 
[place.” 
I had pooh-hoohed Todd about his 
(invention, and the old man had swelled 
[up like an insulted toad. 
“Huh!” he snorted in his cracked 
| treble, and glaring at me with his thin 
[blue eyes. “These here young fellers 
[nowadays think they are so turribly 
[smart!” He stalked away disdainfully 
las if the present generation were the dirt 
I of the earth. But somehow the outraged 
[dignity of his face and manner did not 
[get down to his knees —they were agi¬ 
tated, and I laughed. 
Well, the bet was made. While there 
| was “no money passed,” and probably 
would never be, the winner nevertheless 
would derive a vast satisfaction from 
I the outcome. That had always been the 
[way with father and Todd. Father never 
[did quite forgive his neighbor for being 
[the first to get out and work for school 
[consolidation. Father was trustee at the 
[time, and he always felt that Todd put 
lone over on him by riding the community 
[day and night for a week and working up 
[such a school spirit that when the ques¬ 
tion was voted, it carried five to one in 
[favor. On the other hand, Todd had 
[always been a “great hand” with chick¬ 
ens. It was father who brought the first 
[pure-breds into the region, and again led 
[in egg production by first feeding a 
[balanced egg ration. Todd had never 
[recovered from either of these affronts. 
[He might have borne up under the pure¬ 
bred idea, but the year father sold more 
| e ggs per hen than any other farmer in the 
[country, and beat Todd at least two to 
[one, was a straw' that not only broke the 
[camel’s back, but made the camel so mad 
[that he never regained his temper. 
I The following night, father took old 
|Tom over to Todd’s crib and locked the 
old lazy cat up with the corn. Todd, on 
the other hand, belligerently brought his 
trap over, filled the nail keg with water, 
and set it in dad’s crib. 
Along about dark, just about the time 
I was done with the feeding, dad came 
out to the barn and sat down in the door 
of the harness room while I finished 
tearing up hay for the horses. 
“Son,” he said thoughtfully, “darned 
if I know whether that old blue tom-cat 
will catch rats or not. Do you? ” 
“Never saw him catch anything but 
the drip of cream from his old lazy 
whiskers,” I told dad cheerfully. 
Dad was silent a long time. I poked 
about my work, waiting for him to say 
what he had come to say—he hadn’t said 
it yet. I knew dad very well indeed. 
“Tell you what I want you to do, son,” 
he finally said. “I want you to go over 
with me along after bedtime—take your 
flashlight—and we’ll see what that old 
tom-cat is up to.” 
“O. K.,” I agreed. 
“Todd never would get through laugh¬ 
wall and made ourselves as invisible as 
we could under the circumstances. But it 
wasn’t our ability to conjure ourselves 
out of sight that saved us—it was pure 
luck. For Todd turned off at the 
gate, and for some reason put his light 
out. 
“He’ll be back in a minute,” whispered 
father. “Lay low, son. He’ll go to bed 
when he goes back in the house.” 
We waited a full fifteen minutes, but 
Todd did not reappear. 
“I reckon he must have gone out to 
the road, and gone back in the front way,” 
finally father decided. 
Working upon this, hypothesis, which 
proved correct, we went about our job. 
I pulled away two or three boards, and 
finally evolved a crack large enough to 
admit dad’s portly figure. I followed 
him, and then began our business of 
shining the eyes of the rodents and 
flattening their skulls with a section of 
broom handle. Along about three o’clock 
in the morning they began to take the 
hint and game got scarce from then on; 
Old Tom never missed a chance to fill up on cream — but as for exerting himself to 
chase rats — : That was too much to expect of his royal cat-ship. 
ing at me if his trap caught my rats, and 
old Tom didn’t catch his,” he added 
presently. 
I nodded. “He would roast you to a 
fare-you-well, pop,” I frankly agreed. 
‘“Reckon he would?” Dad looked up 
at me quickly. I wasn’t helping him 
very much. 
I nodded again, more cheerfully than 
ever. “He’d rag you out of the country, 
pop. You’d have to sell out and go to 
Texas.” 
Mother was accustomed to going to bed 
shortly after supper; and as soon as 
possible thereafter father and I surrepti¬ 
tiously left the house. Arriving at Todd’s 
without mishap, we sneaked down to the 
crib. I found a loose board, pulled it off, 
inserted my flashlight, and looked for old 
Tom. There he was in one corner, nest¬ 
ling in a pile of shucks. A mob of mice 
and rats scampered to shelter, but old 
Tom blinked his yellow eyes once or 
twice, then curled his paw around his 
lazy old nose and resumed his slumbers. 
“Holy mackerel,” groaned dad. “Son, 
this won’t do.” 
“No,” I conceded, “you’ll never get a 
five dollar hat and a ten-cent cigar with 
this scheme.” 
“I’ll tell you what we’ll do, son,” 
father said finally. “We’ll just have to 
stay here till we are sure Todd’s gone to 
bed, then get in there somehow and 
knock a lot of those rats in the head and 
have them ready in the morning as 
evidence.” 
“S-h-h-h!” I whispered warningly. 
Todd had come out of the back door, 
carrying a lantern, and was bearing down 
upon us. We shrank up against the barn 
but we managed to chloroform about 
fifty. Ddd stuck his knife into the throat 
of each one, just behind the ear, to show 
Todd how methodical old Tom was in his 
methods; and just before day we pulled 
out for home. 
T ODD showed up shortly after break¬ 
fast. Then all of us went down to the 
crib to see how the trap had been working. 
I stopped amazed. The contraption had 
worked, sure enough. When we poured 
the water out of the keg, we found it 
was about half full of perfectly good rats, 
thoroughly and permanently drowned. 
Todd looked us over triumphantly, and 
his cracked treble filling the morning air 
in great guffaws of laughter. 
“Whut’ed I tell you, hay, smarty?” 
he said to me, wagging his finger under 
my nose. It did him more good to have 
the joke on me than it did to have it on 
father. 
“All right,” said dad, blandly. “Now 
let’s go down to your place of business 
and see what my old blue Tom-cat has 
been doing.” 
We repaired to Todd’s crib. When 
I opened the door, Tom rose from his 
pile of shucks, just as if he had taken a 
short nap after a hard night’s work, in¬ 
stead of rising from a scarcely interrupted 
night of slumber, and came yawningly 
up to me to have his back rubbed. It 
was Todd’s turn to stare, and dad’s turn 
to laugh. And dad laughed. He bent 
double and the clapboards rattled with 
his merriment. 
“Look behind each ear, Todd.” 
Todd obeyed. 
“Clean work, hey, Todd?” laughed 
dad. “That’s what 1 call spiking them 
dead as they come.” 
The work went on each night with un¬ 
abated energy. The trap had its regula¬ 
tion supply each morning, while dad and 
I misspent the small hours in this fruitless 
and disgusting labor. 
“ I am about to get fed up on this thing,” 
I finally protested. “I’m willing to help 
you out, pop, but along about a week 
of this thing is all I care to consume at 
one setting.” 
“Don’t go back on me now, for God’s 
sake, son!” dad pleaded. “There can’t 
be many more rats over there, and if 
luck is with us we’ll have the ups on Todd. 
We still have fifty to the good.” 
“Yes,” I agreed, “that’s so. But look 
at the catch last night. We smoked out 
every hole and didn’t get but a dozen. 
While that infernal machine of .Todd’s 
produces its regulation thirty-five a 
night.” 
“We’ll just have to go to Bill Simms’ 
barn to-night,” said dad desperately. 
“He always did have more rats than 
anybody, and we can get a barrel of ’em 
out of his crib.” 
“I’ll work one more night, pop,” I said 
dutifully. “Just one.” 
“One will be enough,” said father 
nervously. 
T HAT night we sneaked over to Bill 
Simms’ crib. It wasn’t far from home, 
and the pickings were unquestionably 
good. By this time I had become an 
adept, and while dad operated the search¬ 
light on the holes, I wielded the sawed-off 
broom handle. By midnight we had 
killed two hundred rodents, and dad 
viewed the carcasses, after stabbing them 
behind the ears, with unbounded gratifi¬ 
cation. 
“We’ll get a sack and take these things 
over to Todd’s,” he planned. “Then 
we’ll hit the hay. Feel right good to get a 
half night’s sleep. I tell you, son, this 
thing has had me under a terrible strain. 
I reckon I haven’t been altogether fair 
with you in this thing, but I just couldn’t 
let Todd get the ups on me. He’d gooly 
over me till he died.” 
“That’s all right. Dad,” I answered 
magnanimously. “I’m right behind you 
in this. But don’t you ever tell me again 
that a tom-cat ^vill catch rats. We’ve 
demonstrated that this one won’t, at 
least.” 
“He used to be a mighty good ratter.” 
Dad never went back on his prejudices. 
I put the rats in a gunny sack, and 
shouldered them while dad closed the 
door to the crib and put the peg in 
place. I heard him give a muffled ex¬ 
clamation. 
“Look, son!” he whispered in my ear. 
I followed his finger back over to our 
house. Down at the barn a light was 
covertly playing in and out between the 
barn and cribs. “It’s them darned 
thieves!” he cursed. “That’s where all 
of our eggs and those two young pullets 
have been going. Run, son. We can 
come back and get the rats later.” 
We ran. At the lot gate vte paused, 
adjusted our forward movement to con¬ 
form to the exigencies of the situation, 
and crept up to the crib. The light was 
plainly visible between the cracks. 
I was the first to get to a point of van¬ 
tage, although dad was right behind me, 
blowing violently—the run had winded 
him. Applying my eye cautiously to the 
crack, I looked inside the crib. There 
was Todd, craftily stirring the pile of 
corn for rats, and when one appeared, 
which now was seldom, he cracked it 
across the skull—if he was lucky and his 
aim were good—and heaved its still 
kicking carcass into the nail keg in the 
trap. 
I watched Todd miss three big husky 
ones before I broke down and split the 
night with my laughter. Todd, caught 
red-handed, swore mightily and went off 
through the night vowing vengeance. 
He never fully recovered from his chagrin, 
(i Continued on page 95) 
