Rural Resilience

Sometimes the rural idyll is rat shaped.

Life in the countryside may seem idyllic.
It is.

The long leaf-rustling walks, or the lure of the wooded bank sides in spring when the first primroses poke through. Collecting eggs from the hens, still warm in the chopped straw. Coming home to a slow cooked stew. Woodsmoke, roses bursting bud, a cosy fireplace, splashing in the edge of a crystal clear stream…

The sore pull of muscles after a long day stacking wood, or cutting out dead branches from the hedge. The damp bedding hanging musty in the cold kitchen whilst you hug tight the rapidly cooling mug to tea, remembering you forgot to buy bread and cheese and craving a far away takeaway. The thick caking of mud around your boots (and seemingly everywhere else!) that you’ve just found have a leak where the foul water seeps in, trying to kick them off at the door to save walking chicken poo across the flagstones, fumbling with the weakening head torch with your other hand – no streetlamps here, or clear swept pavements. The car is due its MOT next week, a too-long ignored rattle probably means it will need expensive work to pass – but we can’t be without it this far up a single track lane. The lane that delivery lorry drivers hate because of the low Victorian railway bridge – trains long halted.

Countryside living takes resilience; its not always the picturesque image from those old chocolate box lids, and Waitrose commercials. The village pub with its roaring fire, is doing everything it can to desperately draw in more trade, the primary school only had a handful of of new September intakes.

Today’s lesson in rural resilience came in the shape of a small grey very angry rat. Generally speaking, if something looks like a rat, runs and hides like a rat, and squeaks like a rat, it probably is a rat – especially when it comes into your home in the jaws of your beloved feline friend. To say I was not particularly overjoyed to see said rat pinned behind the (unlit!) log burner by The Cat, early on a Sunday morning when I was still in my pyjamas, is perhaps the perfect example of classic British understatement. I was home alone, my husband having taken our one car to drive to work in a town over half and hour away.

There are a few essentials very rural household should own – a large torch of course, wellington boots obviously, a broom for sweeping hard floors…. draught excluders, and a rat trap. I rapidly closed the internal doors, blocking the gaps beneath with the draught excluders, lined up all the books, baskets, boxes and the like that I could lay my hands on to create a sort of corridor to the open back door, and peered into the fireplace to try and identify where the inconvenient critter had gone. Silence for a long while had me almost convinced that it had died of wounds or shock, forming a new worry of how would we remove the body, before we next wanted to light the log burner (can you imagine the smell…?!). Death was unconfirmed however, so there was nothing for it but to swing the rat trap into action. Thanks here are owed to my parents, who, living just over the hill, popped to the local hardware store once Sunday opening hours commenced, to purchase me a large metal humane cage trap. I really hate to use poison for a number of reasons, and didn’t want to put down deadly snap traps that could injure inquisitive paws, whiskers, or human fingers, and without transport I wasn’t able to reach the shops by myself.

The Cat and I both heard the trap spring. A bait combination of cat biscuits and peanut butter was never going to fail. By lunch time, the living room was returned to its usual configuration, and the rat had been transported far away along a bridal way to a field edge through the woods. There it can feed on spilt grain, and become food in turn for owl or other predator. Perhaps by sparing it, it will sate the hunger of the fox, keeping that creature in turn from the hen coop door.

Cat of course, is curled up fast asleep. Dreaming dreams that squeak and scamper no doubt.

I on the other hand, need to finally tackle my Sunday to do list – muck out the chickens, clean the kitchen floor, check the level in the oil tank, sweep wet leaves from where they have turned the brick path slippery as an ice rink, empty the dehumidifier tank and try to get another load of laundry dry. At least the views are prettier here, and most people don’t care if there’s twigs in my hair.

Note: I realise that talking of rural resilience the weekend that is reeling from the aftermath of Storm Claudia, my seem insensitive. My rodent difficulties, pale to an easily hopped speed bump in comparison to the mountain faced by the individuals and communities facing devastating floods and damage in the wake of the rain or stormy weather in other parts of the UK. some of the videos and photos emerging on the news and social media are truly terrifying and heartbreaking for all concerned, and all watching on. My thoughts and compassion, although of little practical use I know, are with all those affected.