RAT CUNNING

I once spent twelve hours locked in a battle of wits with a maneating rat in a blizzard-bound hut in the Snowy Mountains.

I had been enjoying a short hike in the mountains when the blizzard struck. Fortunately it struck at a moment when I was within a few metres of a stone hut, one of several reserved in the mountains by the National Parks and Wildlife people precisely to provide shelter for people in my situation.

In the fading light I explored the hut and found matches, firewood and a cache of tinned food. There was also a battered table, a couple of chairs and a strip of foam rubber on the floor that would serve as a bed. I would survive the blizzard, I reflected, but not in the comfort to which I was accustomed. I was only a few kilometres from my motel because, naturally, I had no intention of spending a night in the open. However, a few kilometres in a Snowy Mountains blizzard might as well be ten thousand.

Opening the door of the hut, I peered out into the whirling haze and listened to the eerie, lost whine of the wind. There was no way I was going out there. Shutting the door, I took off my snowshoes, dumped my rucksack on the table and set about lighting a fire. There was plenty of wood. The cache of tinned food would have lasted me a month but I had my own rations in my rucksack — ham, smoked salmon, caviar, cheese, hardboiled eggs, bread — enough to ward off starvation for days. And enough whisky for a week. And a couple of bottles of good red wine. An experienced bushman, I never venture far from my motel without that sort of insurance.

The yellow, flickering light of the fire filled the hut with comfort of a sort. I opened a bottle of whisky, sat down at the table and contemplated my lot. I was obviously stuck here for the night. It was only three o’clock but the blizzard had already produced the effect of late dusk. It certainly wasn’t going to lift before nightfall. A swig of whisky. Obviously the main problem facing me was acute boredom. I had nothing to read. Food and alcohol were pleasant, but hardly continuous distractions. The rough stone hut had limited architectural value. There was no window and even if there had been, looking out into the white maelstrom would have been as entertaining as staring into a washing machine. My spirits fell. Another swig of whisky. I screwed the lid back on. I could be here for four or five days. My immediate future was dreary, but it would be frightful if I drank up all my whisky in the first twenty-four hours. Glumly I stared at the partly diminished bottle.

There was absolutely nothing to do for the next three hours. Then I could have another couple of whiskies, a half bottle of wine and a meal. That could possibly occupy an hour. Then I would have to sit there until, say, eleven o’clock before giving myself one more whisky and trying to sleep on the foam rubber strip. I am not a man given to exciting nightlife, but the prospects before me were exceedingly dull.

Then I saw the rat.

It stuck its head out of a hole in the wall and looked at me.

In the firelight it seemed to have an egg-shaped head. An egg with two little ears, black, shining nose, and whiskers. Black face with a white throat. Its bright, little eyes were reflecting the yellow flames and it looked quite pretty and friendly.

I began to think of every prison story I had read wherein life-serving inmates struck up consoling friendships with rodents, or ravens, or whatever. I had only been in the hut for half an hour, but I had begun to feel like that.

The rat came right out of its hole onto a ledge in the stone wall. Its body was plump and sleek, no longer than my hand, black on the back and white underneath. Its tail, as long as its body, trailed after it like a finely plaited whip. ‘Hullo, rat,’ I said.

It made no reply, but slipped down the wall and ran across to one of the table legs. Then it stopped, raised itself on its haunches, did something engaging with its front paws and whiskers, and looked at me again. This, I felt, was a rat used to human contact and disposed to be friendly.

I snapped my fingers at it and said, ‘Come on up here, rat.’ It did. It ran up the leg of the table, manoeuvred itself around the formidable overhang and appeared on the table top.

I thought of digging into my rucksack and offering a morsel of food, but decided against it. After all, I didn’t know how long I was to be in this hut. I might need every crumb. Even this pleasant, engaging rat, I thought mournfully, might become part of the diet.

I banished the thought and snapped my fingers again.

‘Come closer, rat,’ I said, ‘and let us share our solitude.’ The rat came swiftly across the table to my outstretched fingers, obviously, I thought a little remorsefully, expecting some food.

I let my fingers lie there and the rat came up and sniffed them curiously.

It was a touching moment; a man and a rat, trapped and isolated in a stone cell in a blizzard, communicating in a mystical and ancient fashion.

Then the little brute sank its front teeth into the forefinger of my right hand.

I screamed and jerked my hand back. My elbow caught the bottle of whisky and sent it flying. I lunged for it, my fear of losing the whisky making me forget the rodent chewing at my finger.

I missed the bottle and it crashed to the stone floor and shattered. The rat dropped off my forefinger into the pool of whisky.

It stood there for a moment, thinking, then dipped its head and lapped at the whisky. It turned and ran across the room, up the wall and into its hole.

I was left alone mourning my lost whisky and contemplating the shattered ruin of my forefinger. Perhaps ‘shattered ruin’ is an exaggeration, but there were definitely toothmarks. And the rat had been chewing.

I examined the wound anxiously, wondering whether a tourniquet was appropriate and trying to remember what diseases rats carried. Bubonic plague sprang to my mind, but even I, hopeless hypochondriac that I am, found that unlikely in a snowbound hut in southern New South Wales. However, you never know.

With any luck I could get to a doctor within a few days and have myself inoculated against every disease known to man.

In the meantime I had more pressing problems. Half my whisky supply was soaking into the stone floor. I had two bottles of wine and one more bottle of whisky to see me through my lonely vigil.

Moreover, I had just survived a ferocious attack by a wild animal and needed a drink.

I threw a few logs on the fire and opened the second bottle. I would just have a couple of swigs to settle my raw nerves and possibly combat any infection I might have taken from the rat’s teeth.

Half a bottle later I realised that it was seven o’clock and I could reasonably set about preparing my evening meal.

I made myself a couple of complicated sandwiches of egg, smoked salmon and caviar and opened one of my bottles of wine. Half that, I felt, along with the whisky, would ensure a good night’s sleep.

The fire was getting low and I walked across to put on a few more logs. It blazed and crackled. A flare of sparks blew out in a cloud of smoke. A log in hand, I turned my head away and saw the rat again.

It was running across the floor, heading for the table and my sandwiches.

‘Clear off, you vile animal,’ I roared.

The rat ignored me, reached the table leg, swarmed up it, slid around the overhang and made relentlessly for my sandwiches.

I knew the lust to kill. Swinging back my arm I whirled the log in my hand around my head and flung it, a deadly missile, straight at the vulnerable, sleek form of the black and white rat.

The log took my bottle of wine in the middle of the table, carried it across to the stone wall of the hut and shattered it.

The rat, unperturbed, ran across to my sandwiches and began eating them.

Sick with rage and grief, I grabbed another log, strode across to the table and began bashing at the rat with reckless disregard for my sandwiches.

The rat slid away, ran down the table leg, crossed the floor, climbed the wall and disappeared down its hole.

One of my sandwiches had become a nasty mess on the wooden table.

I stood panting in the firelight. I was sapped. Outside a howling, deadly blizzard, inside a rat with homicidal tendencies ravaging my supplies of food and drink. Half a bottle of whisky and a bottle of wine stood between me and total nervous collapse.

I looked at my remaining sandwich and realised I didn’t know whether the rat had been chewing on it or not. I am a fastidious man, and the idea of eating something a rat has had a go at first is repugnant to me. I decided to diminish my remaining rations to make two new sandwiches. After all, I had the food left in the hut if things became too desperate. I looked at the labels. Tinned spaghetti. Tinned corned beef. Tinned camp pie. I had a vision of myself eating these things without wine or whisky. Perhaps the perils of the blizzard were preferable.

However, for the moment there were food and drink, and my spirits needed a lift. I made myself two more sandwiches and opened the second bottle of wine. After all, a man had to have something and the blizzard might have lifted by morning.

It was a good meal. I enjoyed it and wasn’t really surprised that by the time I’d finished there wasn’t enough wine in the bottle to be worth keeping. I drank the last few mouthfuls, threw some more logs on the fire, kicked off my shoes and lay down on the foam rubber strip.

Wine is a great comforter and I was confident I would survive this ordeal as I slid into warm, well-fed sleep.

Then I was wide awake with that bloody rat chewing at my nose.

I grabbed the damned thing and flung it across the room, then blundered to my feet in the light of the dying fire, seized a snowshoe and attacked the black and white horror.

I struck at it several times, but all I succeeded in doing was jarring my hand and seriously damaging the snowshoe. The rat slid safely into its hole.

I stood panting, one hand to my nose, wondering how much of it was left. There was no blood and no pain, but a great sense of indignity.

I looked at my watch. Three o’clock. In the morning. I had been in that hut a mere twelve hours. I thought of opening the door to see whether the blizzard had abated, but the unholy shriek of the wind informed me that it hadn’t.

My nerves were not in good order. I had been awakened from a deep sleep by a particularly revolting attack on my nose by a rat. My blood alcohol level could only be described as precarious. Normally I awake feeling refreshed with any possible excesses metabolised by food and sleep. At the moment I was not feeling refreshed. I felt nervous and fretful.

I built up the fire again and sat down in a chair gazing at the dancing flames. Irrespective of my physical condition, I had a problem. Even a man of considerably stronger nervous temperament than mine could hardly be expected to lie down and sleep in the knowledge that a black-and-white rat was about to creep out and bite off his nose.

On the other hand, it was difficult to contemplate some hours sitting on a hard chair, gazing into the fire with a half-grown hangover permeating my being.

For a moment I contemplated creeping out into the blizzard and allowing the elements to eliminate my problems forever. However, it was not really an attractive prospect.

There was, of course, on the table, a half-empty bottle of whisky. A half-empty bottle is a half-full bottle. I looked sidewise at the source of courage, and hesitated for up to thirty seconds before going over and taking a healthy swig. After all, one swig was nothing and provided I stopped at that there would be plenty left to see me through the worst of the following day. I took another swig.

Resolution flowed into my chest and stomach in a warm, glowing stream. The dilemma was obvious. I really had only one problem. The rat. If I eliminated the rat I could sleep until nature restored my wellbeing.

After all, a man did not really need alcohol. Once the terror of the rat had been eliminated all I had to do was wait in the hut, dozing before the fire, eating when I felt like it and then, when the blizzard was over, walk back to my motel. It was all quite clear. I took another swig. I would maintain my morale with whisky until I rid myself of that tiresome rat. Another swig and my morale was high enough for me to seriously consider means.

How does an unarmed man slay a rat? There seemed little point in opening the door and trying to induce it to stamp out into the snow to die. It had already shown its adroitness in avoiding being flattened by a snowshoe. My attempts at dispatching it by pitching logs at it had proven nothing less than disastrous. What, then? Obviously I had to set a trap of some sort. I looked around the hut, vaguely wondering if there was some wire and string from which I might fashion a snare. There was none.

Then the table caught my attention. It was a very thick, heavy table. On it were the remains of the original sandwiches tainted by the rat. Here were both bait and trap.

I scraped the sandwiches up and put them in a neat pile in the centre of the hut. Removing my rucksack and whisky to a safe corner I, with considerable effort, turned the table upside down so that its legs stuck in the air. I selected the longest log in the woodpile and dragged the table to the centre of the hut, holding one end up from the floor so that the sandwich bait wasn’t smeared everywhere. Then I propped that end of the table up with the log.

The idea was obvious. I expected the rat to come creeping over to devour the bait. While it was stuffing itself, I would pull away the log. The table would crash to the floor and the rat would be reduced to a flattened wreck. The thought of mashed rat in the remains of my sandwiches was aesthetically daunting but, I reasoned, there would be no cause for me to move the table again and I need never see the result of my handiwork.

But how to pull the log away? I needed a rope. There was none. However, I had a belt and, such is my girth, it was a long one. I slipped it off and looped it around the log. Then I retreated to the foam rubber strip. Lying on my stomach with my right arm stretched out and my fingers holding the end of the belt, I was far enough away from the trap not to alarm the rat. Not that the rat showed any signs of being alarmed by anything.

I waited, gazing at the rathole, waiting for the enemy. Lying on your stomach with your arm outstretched is very uncomfortable after a while. Besides, my stomach is not the sort designed to be lain on. It’s more the sort you clasp comfortably in your hands. But my bloodlust was up and I lay motionless.

I kept on lying motionless for about an hour. Every part of my body was aching in protest and my shoulders were numb in the parts where they weren’t being tortured by pins and needles. The fire needed replenishing and I realised that soon I would have to get up and feed it more logs.

But then the rat appeared.

White whiskers, shining nose, black head and white throat, tiny alert ears.

It came out of the hole quickly and climbed down the wall before pausing to clean its whiskers with its front paws.

Even though my killing instinct was making my heart beat fast, I realised for the first time that this was a very pretty creature. Undoubtedly a rat, but a very pretty rat. A terrible doubt struck me that it might be a native rat, not some scabrous refugee from a foreign vessel of the past, but an ancient Australian native animal, and probably a protected species.

It stopped washing its whiskers and began ambling across the floor towards the sandwiches at the death trap.

I was shaken with sudden doubt. Could I drop a table on a beautiful native animal? What had it done to me? Merely mauled my finger, spoiled my sandwiches and chewed my nose. Yes, I could drop a table on a beautiful native animal. I only wished I had a shotgun to make sure of the job.

The rat had reached the sandwiches and was tucking in enthusiastically.

I jerked at the belt.

The log fell to one side and the table crashed down.

But the bottom of the log had not come clear and the table was still some centimetres from the ground at one end.

I lay rigid, staring at the raised end of the table, waiting for the rat to emerge.

It didn’t.

I sat up, wincing as my joints painfully reorganised themselves.

Was the rat dead beneath the table? Or was it lying there trapped, squeezed to immobility under the enormous weight?

All I had to do was pull out the log and that would have settled the matter.

But there is a difference between hunt and execution. I could spring the trap but I couldn’t, as it were, take a second shot at a sitting rat.

Despondently I sat on the foam rubber and wondered what to do. Come on, you yellow-livered loon, I told myself. Pull away the log and put an end to the matter. If necessary, jump on the table as well. That’ll fix the turbulent beast.

But I couldn’t do it. For some reason I kept remembering the little black and white creature washing its whiskers in the firelight. I had forgotten its destruction of my sandwiches, forgotten its assaults on my person. It was, after all, a creature of the wild, following its instincts.

It would have been different if I thought I had a mashed rat under a table I need never move, but now my mind was filled with visions of a trapped, possibly injured animal suffering because of my small-mindedness.

I stood up, crossed to the table, grabbed one leg and lifted.

The rat ran out and bit me on the big toe of my left foot, right through the thick sock.

I screamed and dropped the table. It fell on the big toe of my right foot.

I reeled backwards across the room and knocked over my remaining whisky bottle, which I had neglected to seal.

The rat ran back to its hole.

I crouched in the corner, holding my toes and wondering whether I was permanently crippled. A faint, gurgling noise drew my eye to the whisky bottle on its side, the precious contents draining onto the floor. I lurched over and grabbed it. There was perhaps one good nip left. I drank it.

And now there was nothing but my battered and bitten toes, the evil rat and the howling blizzard outside.

Howling blizzard? It was dead silent in the hut. That was why I had heard the whisky gurgling away. I limped to the door and pulled it open. A clear, still, moonlit night, the lovely moonscape of snow and an easy crossing between me and my motel.

I was packed and out of that hut in one minute flat, my injuries forgotten.

As I left, I looked my last at the rathole.

The pretty little face was there, the whiskers drooping, the eyes regarding me with interest perhaps tinged with contempt.

I slammed the door and walked off into the snow.