Ants in My Pants? No….Rats!

When Dad harvested his corn crop it was stored in a corn crib. Later in the year, usually during the winter, we would load up the surplus ear corn and truck it to town to sell to either the feed mill or to the local feed lots. It was usually my job to do the loading or shoveling of the ear corn into an electric-powered elevator, which in turn carried the corn into a large grain truck. My brother, George Jr., would be on the truck bed stomping and spreading the load which we did to assure uniform and maximum packing of the load.

After being stored for months at a time in the crib, the corn got very dusty. It was the perfect place for mice and rats and also an occasional snake. Dad always told us not to kill the snakes because they were mouse-eating snakes. Yeah, right! I guess they ate mice all right, but I doubt they could handle the rats that were abundant there, especially when those rats were three times the size of the snake! On this occasion, I was getting to the very last corner pile of corn when the pile started to move with all those rats in it. My dad told me to stop loading for a while and equipped me with a 2” wide Fordson tractor fan belt to use on those rats as they started running around. The belt, being very flexible, would kill a running rat instantly with just one lick. It was far better than trying to use a stick.

Dad told me to get up higher on the wall, so I positioned myself in a corner about five feet from the floor. I had both feet firmly on a flat 2x4 running all around the corn crib wall. Dad said he would stir up the pile of corn and kill whatever rats he could on the floor, but those that climbed the walls would be up to me.

Well, he did just that and all hell broke loose! There were dozens of the monsters! We had stuffed corn cobs into all the mouse holes leading out of the crib and the larger holes we nailed shut with lids from tomato cans or coffee cans. When those rats crawled the walls trying to get out and finding all the exits shut, all they could do was scamper around. A lot of them came towards me standing on that flat 2x4, which made them an easy target for me and my fan belt. One lick to each one and I had a pile of dead rats under me!

Here’s where the problem starts ... There were rats coming toward me from the right and rats coming toward me from the left. I was standing there with feet spread far apart on that 2x4 runner and holding on to a wire tied to the roof rafter with my left hand. The only movement I had was the swinging of my right hand holding my weapon. Because rats were coming at me from both directions, while swatting at one, another rat coming from the other side ran up to my shoe. Not being able to get around, it proceeded to crawl up the inside of my pants leg! It was freezing that day so I had put on two pairs of blue jeans which made for a tight fit around my legs. If you have ever experienced the feel of a cricket or grasshopper crawling up your shirt, you know how icky those spiny legs feel on your skin. If you multiply that feeling ten times over, you might get the idea how it felt with the rat trying to claw his way up my pants leg.

Before I realized it, he was burrowing past my knee on his way towards a more vulnerable target! All I could do was grab that bulge in my pants with my right hand, turn loose of that wire holding me up and jump down from my perch to the floor below. Still holding that rat real tightly, I proceeded to unbuckle my pants and slowly peel my pants down to the point where I could see some fur. Then with a quick rolling snap I turned loose of that rat and out it fell to the floor. In my horror and fear, I had crushed that sucker through my pants leg to the point where that was one dead rat falling to the floor.

After all that excitement, I put my pants back on and finished the load. It was all in a day’s work.