The Intellectual Pest

     I went to Wing to see my older brother Harold a while back. Harold is 82. He is getting around pretty slow, as he has for some time. He survived a ruptured aneurysm in his brain a lot of years ago while fighting the Yellowstone Fire, but survive it he did, partly because he was so big and strong, the doc said. It was an eight hour operation, and he had to be cooled down to stone cold, stop his heart to empty that blood vessel. Then a lady surgeon had to reach those tiny, slim fingers into the brain stem and clamp that now empty blood vessel. Then his heart was started again. When he woke up, I shook his hand, which was still stone cold, and headed to Arkansas. I was not needed. His wife Lou was there.. Lou was watching over him, and nobody is better when a family member is at death's door. That started slowing him some, but fortunately, his brain is as sharp as it ever was. Harold has said for the last 25 years or so that he would love to meet someone who is also a survivor of that same kind of operation, so he could compare notes. But so far, he hasn't found anyone.

     Harold always kept a project going, and he thinks through each step very carefully. This time, the project was to get rid of a very intellectual pest.

     Harold's house has a small room off the porch where the cat's sleep. But it had been invaded by some sort of mysterious animal, which continues to eat up all their cat food. He expelled the cats for the duration of this project, and comes up with one idea after another for catching this unwelcome visitor. The room has access to the house underneath area, but closed off from the outside.

     The first idea was to put out his homemade armadillo box trap, with lots of cat food as bait.  The next morning, the bait was all gone, but the trap was not thrown.

     Seeing this was not going to work, Harold got a wire box trap from Walmart. The next morning, all the bait was gone, the trap was thrown, but no animal inside. There had been enough cat food inside these traps to feed an army, and every bit of it was always gone.

    This is where I came into the picture. We discussed this problem in great detail, for a good part of the day.

     Since the animal had already defeated the two traps designed for relatively large animals, such as a stray cat, coon, or possum, we determined it must be smaller. And since it carried off tons of food, we decided it was carrying it off and hiding it. We put our heads together and came up with the logical solution, a pack rat! Once we agreed on this, we spent the rest of the day on strategy.

     We got a rat trap, just a glorified wood and wire mouse trap, but much larger. We discussed bait. I recommended a chunk of cheese, as it would be harder to get it off the trap without throwing it. Harold wanted to stick some pieces of cat food around on the cheese, as this animal had already shown it was partial to cat food. I tried to convince Harold that everybody and everything just loves cheese, and a good round chunk of it, alone, would be sufficient. He finally gave in. We set the trap right beside the two useless traps already there, topped by a really nice chunk of ripe cheese.

     Harold suggested we had to tie that trap down, because that animal might get a leg or something caught, and drag his only rat trap off.  I said the trap didn't need that, because once a rat was securely in it, it was going nowhere anyway. We debated this for a good part of the afternoon, and by sundown, Harold had won out. It was his trap, and his house.

     Big Dan, Harold's youngest son, was there, temporarily recovering from some medical issues, and he was not to be left out of this discussion. Dan allowed as how, in case it didn't get caught, it might circle the trap a time or two, to inspect the cheese, and we should sprinkle flour on the floor in the whole area, and that way, we might at least see a track or two, and get some idea about what we were up against. We discussed the merits and shortcomings of this idea, we each had our say, but in the end, nobody came up with a good reason why we should not do that, so we did.    

     As bed time approached, we were all anxious to see what the morning would bring. I wanted to peek in on the situation at bed time, but Harold said leave it alone. This animal never stirred before midnight, he said.

     Now, I didn't really understand how Harold knew that, as he is always asleep by eight o'clock. But, I didn't mention that, because I knew it would only trigger a new round of discussions on that point, and we were all pretty well worn out from debating all day, as it was.

     Big Dan has had a wild and adventure filled life. But Big Dan has now found the Lord, and was anxious to talk about it. He and I probably talked more that night at Harold's than we had ever talked before in our lives.

      I lived for a time with Big Dan, in the Gas Fields of Western Oklahoma. I was working one summer on a large gas well, and Big Dan roared up one day on his Harley, and easily got a job there, when the boss saw how big and strong he was. He made my life there a lot easier. The other Roughnecks stopped throwing large chunks of iron off the tower at me, just to see how well I could dodge, once Big Dan was on the scene. And life was sure a lot simpler in that roughneck town, also, hanging out with Big Dan. He was just a skinny kid then, about 270 pounds or so. Nobody messed with Big Dan.

     When I headed for bed that night at Harold's, I turned and held Dan's eye for a moment across the room. “I'm proud of you, Dan. You're a good man.” Dan flashed a smile. “Thanks, Uncle Pat. You've ALWAY'S been a good man.” That was a good exchange to end that visit on. I slept well.

     When I got up the next morning, Dan had already been up for a long time, and drained the coffee pot totally dry, maybe for the second or third time, because you can never tell about Big Dan. He was now long gone, off to see his girlfriends and boyfriends.

Harold was up too, waiting at his spot at the table while Lou cooked breakfast.  He said, “Just go look for yourself, and see if you can pick a track out of that mess”. Well, that told me we must not have been successful, but I rushed out there anyway. The bait was gone, the trap was thrown, and the trap was pulled to the end of the wire. There was a lot of claw and scratch marks where this animal pulled the trap around, but the flour was pretty much a mess, and using all my skills built up from my woodsman experiences, about all I could read from that was, he sure had some sharp claws.

     Well, I sure did want to hang around until the end game of this mystery played out, but Barbara was expecting me home this morning, and looks like I would miss it. My last bit of advice to Harold was to remove all the cat food, sprinkle moth balls around in the room and under the house, leave the outside entrance open tonight to leave it room to get out, then close it back up tomorrow. Most pests I had experienced have no tolerance for moth balls. But I knew in my heart that Harold would not go with it, because by now, he just really had to get a look at this smart animal.

     I wanted to grab that last piece of lemon pie, but there was just a tiny sliver left. Mom always frowned at us when we grabbed the very last bit. I always let Lou know when I'm coming, and I usually arrive at about meal time, and she has my favorite waiting. Coconut pie. This time she surprised me, and it was lemon pie. I now think my favorite kind of pie is lemon pie.

 As I walked out the door, I could tell Harold was starting to plot his next move in his mind. I would like to tell you more, but another night has now passed, and I'm just dying to go call Harold. I can't wait to hear what happened last night.

     Well, it's now a few hours later, and I have talked to Harold. He's had a change of heart. He feels sad and respectful toward this very worthy opponent, and he has decided to take all the cat food out of that room, open the outside opening to the underside of the house, and hopes, maybe when it has eaten up all the cat food it has stashed  away, that it will move out and seek another life. Away from Harold’s house. He wishes it well. We all would have liked to have gotten a look at this brilliant creature, though. Several have mentioned getting a motion activated camera to help get a look at him, and everyone agreed it was a good idea, but no one stepped forward and offered to foot the bill. Goodbye, Einstein of the wild animal kingdom! We all wish you well. Sore nose and all. 

     Late news flash! Harold changed his mind, and did manage to catch the critter, using lady's nylons and peanut butter. I'm not real sure about how all that played out. It was, indeed, a packrat! Now, why didn't I think of that! How simple it all seems now, ladies nylons and peanut butter. However, at last reports, the cat food still seems to be getting gone.

     Some time later, I got the word. The creatures had made a move that would inevitably spell their doom. They chewed the coverings off the electrical wiring of my sweet sis-in-law’s car. That put that look in Harold’s eye that I haven’t seen since I used and lost all of his steel traps while he was in the Air Force.

Now, it was all-out war, and many would not be returning from this final battle. I think I will just stay home and ask no more questions. This battle was about to get really ugly.

    My brother Harold and his sons, like Big Dan for example, were both blessed with great strength. Those strength genes just passed my side of the family by, but I did have one strength when I was young. I could run a long way.

  But fortunately, I never really needed strength to get by in this world. Even as a young man, just out of high school. I had and still have a well-thought-out self-defense plan, consisting of these 6 steps.

 1. Never become a regular at Honkey-tonks, where most of the problems arise. My Dad never let me get accustomed to such as that when I lived in his house, and I just never got the urge to change that. However, I heard somewhere that it’s a felony to hit a man my age, so I’m tempted, armed with this new layer of protection, to investigate some of those Dens of Iniquity. If not now, when? If somebody would just tell me where they are…

 2. Be humble, which I have always been, especially when I’m in a dangerous situation. Some call that fear, but I prefer to think of myself as possessing great humbleness and humility. Just sounds better, somehow.

  3. My fake big man status. I say fake because I weighed 160 pounds, 6'2” right out of high school. No fat. That's the size I still am underneath the fat, but somehow, I now have trouble stretching myself out to six feet tall. I eventually got up to 260 pounds fat and all, now trimmed down to 220 pounds. So I'm a fake big man, because the fat really does not figure in on the positive side where self-defense is concerned. Just slows you down, and makes you hit the ground harder when you do go down. Though I guess that fat would help some, protect these now brittle old bones.

    But fortunately, this is the first time I ever confessed all this, and most possible trouble makers don't really know I'm not an honest-to-goodness big man.

 4. Bluff. That goes back to step three. Though I did try this a time or two during recess at Fourche Valley School, and it never worked a single time. But I didn’t have the protection of step three in those days. I was just a scrawny kid, and everybody could easily see that.

 5. Don't be too proud to run – far. Which I was able to do as a young man. And fear will help out with the lack of speed problem that always plagued me. Though I have trouble getting out of a slow jog now, and this one may be a little outdated and I may have to rework that. 

6. Don't be too proud to lie flat on the ground and beg for mercy, if none of these other steps work. I have no pride. Actually, bragging about a lack of pride is a form of pride in itself. But I always take great pride in my lack of pride.

So far, thank goodness, I've never had to go past step 5.  But it could happen, and when it does, I'll be ready. Remember this general rule to live your life by:

A MAN WHO CAN RUN FAST AND FAR, AND IS NOT TOO PROUD TO DO IT, DOES NOT NEED TO BE A FIGHTER.

     Of course, this rule will only work with a young man. Maybe my dad was right. Maybe I should just stay away from those honkey-tonks.