Hunting Rats With Tractors...

I'm sorry I missed the event, I hear it was quite dramatic and fun.  Any thing involving hunting vermin with large farm equipment has to be interesting to watch.

Hubby says, Ya know that brush pile...

I think, uh, which one?  We have a few.

Hubby says, You know the one I pushed up last summer to burn when it's wet...

Yes, I remember them all.

Any way with a detailed description, I finally pin point the right brush pile in my mind...and then I think, oh, no, not another tractor in the pond story!

Hubby continues, I was pushing the brush pile, tightening it up, and the dogs get after a rat.  The dogs are having no luck with the capture. Okay, now I envision him grading the whole hill side, scraping a hundred years of top soil up, trying to get a rat...on a tractor.  There is a reason I think this drastically...strange things happen a lot around here with my man and the tractor.

Hubbs tells me the rat runs out and climbs a tree.  Ki is on its tail all the way until it hits the tree.  Ki is many things but she is not a flying dog nor a tree climbing dog.  She trees it and won't stop barking.  Hubbs helps out by "tapping" the tree with the tractor bucket...the rat falls out.  My first concern is which tree did he "tap"?  Tap is a small word, but not when you're talking about a tractor.

I am assured, he did not harm the tree and it was JUST a small pine tree anyway...all trees are precious in my book.  So, I listen patiently, trying not to visibly cringe, trying not to picture the damage that pursuing a rat from a tractor could possibly cause.

At this point, the capture of the rat is not my main concern.  This the same man that drove a tractor into the pond, knocked the edge off the boat shed because he forgot he had the bucket up AND the man who ran over a lawn mower while chasing my horses on his Mule.  Oh, me of little faith!

The rat drops, the dogs pounce, the deed is done quickly.  The brush pile is still intact although about thirty feet from it's original position and the precious top soil is only slightly rutted.

The happy dogs proudly take turns carrying the rat around and admiring it.

I had to put my foot down when Ki-Anne wanted to add it to the pile of my slippers in her babies' bed.

...and God, please watch over my tractor man.  He needs all the help he can get.