Let me preface this story by saying, I hate wild rats and mice. I have a great fear and disgust for the nasty, disease carrying vermin. I come by it naturally; my mom hates them, too, and based on this story, my grandpa is not fond of them either..
When I was a high school freshman, my great-grandpa passed away. My family went down to stay with my grandparents to help clean and sort through stuff at my great-grandparent's house after my great-grandma had moved to a nursing home. My mom's side of the family lives in the country on a farm
so wildlife was always around, but I am happy to say we didn't always have face to face encounters with critters. This particular weekend we had more than normal.
For the first rodent story of the weekend, my cousin and I rode our bikes from my grandparent's house to my great-grandparent's house. The men had been cleaning and moving furniture all day. When we rode up into the driveway it was soaking wet and covered with nasty rat nest parts and dead rats. In their cleaning, they had found a huge rat nest and not knowing what to do they washed it out of the old piece of furniture with the water hose. They were everywhere. I was unprepared for that many rodents and thoroughly disgusted by the sight.
We were quick to leave and ride back to my grandparent's house. When we got to my grandparent's, I was tasked with emptying drawers in an old dresser so they could move it out and put a dresser from my great-grandparent's there. I went to work quickly, happy to have such an easy chore. That quickly changed when I opened the first drawer and took the towel or whatever off the top of the pile.
What I found made me scream, which in turn made everyone come running. It was a little mouse, the fact that it was dead and petrified did not come to my attention at the time of the scream. My grandpa ran in. He saw the little mouse laying there and reached for the closest mouse killer, a wire coat hanger. Why on earth he picked a coat hanger I will never know, but he used that wire coat hanger to repeatedly whack the little mouse. Whack, whack, whack went the hanger and bounce, jump, flop went the little mouse. By this time we had acquired quite an audience and most of us were trying not to laugh at the sight of Grandpa repeatedly swatting the mouse with a flimsy metal hanger.
The poor mouse was not alive or jumping. It was dried up, fairly flat, and most definitely dead as a doornail, but the banging it was getting from the coat hanger made it "come to life". Finally, my grandpa quit smacking the old mouse and used something or another to scoop it's dehydrated and dried body into the trash.
Thankfully, those were the only rodents I encountered that weekend. While I am not a fan of rodents, especially wild ones, this is still a story that makes us laugh, especially my mom who cackles hysterically every single time this story is mentioned.
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