The "White Rat" story

It was an ordinary day. I was waiting for my Grandpap to take me to Root's Farmers Market in East Petersburg, PA. He often took his 12 year old grandson to the market for an ice cream cone or soft pretzel. Just the two of us! We ALWAYS wandered over to the livestock auction to see what was being bought and sold. Today they had the regular things such as chickens, guinea pigs, pigeons and rabbits, but today they also had a wooden box of 7 white rats. Some were full grown and some were babies. Some were 6" to 8" long while others were 12" to 18" long. THEY WERE RATS! Your routine white rat family. $2.00 he bid! Nobody else challenged him so we walked away with a new family for my house. We put the box in the trunk of his 2-tone green 1955 Buick and headed home. You see this was not something unusual since he often brought some kind of livestock home with us. Now that I am an adult with grandkids I wonder if he was trying to get even with his daughter and son-in-law, my Mother and Father. We put a wire screen over the wooden box and placed it in the cellar. I was able to hold the young rats, but didn't chance holding the big ones. They did have neat pink tails and big white teeth. Naturally, I had to get rat pellets, vegetables, etc. for my new "pets". Sunday came and we headed to church for the morning. When we returned home I headed to the cellar to check on my new friends. As I headed down the open wooden steps I saw something run across the floor at the bottom of the steps. Oh My Gosh! The rats have escaped. I had never given my rats names, but at this point they were being called a variety of very bad names. They chewed through the wooden box. Big teeth, wooden box, Duh! Well, we had to catch them so my Dad and I found a peach basket and put it upside down with a small stick under one end of it with a string to the steps. We put food under the basket and waited quietly on the steps for the rats to take the bait. THEY REALLY DID! I remember that it took a long time, but we captured them all and this time put them in a aquarium. Good idea! I knew this was going to be the end of my new pets. We lived near the Lancaster Stockyards which was the busiest stockyards east of Chicago. Dad thought they certainly wouldn't mind a few more rats so we took them to the field next to the stockyards and said Goodbye to them. I wasn't really upset since I knew that my Grandpap was going to take me to Roots again very soon. I'll bet you can't wait to hear what happened on the next trip. Just an extraordinary day shared by an ordinary guy and his family. LDub.