In the early 1990s, the grain station in our town encountered a rat infestation, and the hoarded grain suffered a serious loss, and later a nine-curved tanuki cat raised by my grandfather made a big fuss and killed more than a hundred rampant rats overnight, thus preventing the rat infestation from raging.
Nine-curved tanuki cat
My grandfather was a small street vendor selling rice, but also a person who likes cats, once went to an old man's house to exchange rice for wheat, saw his mother cat is big and well-behaved, just gave birth to a few cat cubs, and the idea of wanting one.
The mother cat gave birth to nine kittens, and Grandpa originally agreed with the old man to choose any kitten with five pounds of rice, but when the old man took it out of the nest, there were only eight, and The grandfather's picture happened to be the one left in the nest.
It was a male little tanuki cat, the old man was reluctant to sell, said that it was self-kept, had to make a new bid, until the price doubled, to give ten pounds of rice when the old man gave it to grandpa.
Grandpa and the old man are in this little tanuki cat is very strong, bigger than its siblings are a circle, when other kittens are weak and weak can not stand, it can already run around in the nest, not only that, the little tanuki cat is still very domineering and strong when feeding, all the kittens add up to grab it, which shows its strength.
Little tanuki cat
Grandpa is very fond of this little tanuki cat, after bringing it back also specially checked its palate, counted a total of nine ridges, Grandpa said that this is an unusual nine-curved tanuki cat, when he grows up to catch mice must be a master, so the care of the little tanuki cat is particularly careful.
Sure enough, as Grandpa said, the little tanuki cat grew up to be two circles larger than the original mother cat, with gray and black tiger stripes, short and shiny hair, round head and wide cheeks, and dragged a long upturned tail behind him when he walked, looking very powerful and majestic.
Since raising this tanuki cat, the rats in the family have basically disappeared, not only that, the tanuki cat will catch mice from outside every day to eat, as long as it appears, the rats within a kilometer are doomed.
After graduating from the agricultural college, my second uncle was assigned to the grain station in the town, responsible for the work of food security in the granary, and became the first person in our family to eat commodity grain, and the whole family also gave strong support to the work of the second uncle.
Grain depot in the early nineties
Unfortunately, the second uncle's second year of work was in a drought and grain production was reduced, and when the newly harvested public grain from various villages was stored in the granary, it became the focus of a large number of hungry rats, and the safety of food was seriously threatened by rat infestations.
Rats have always been one of the great enemies of the grain station, in the past grain station on the control of rats, in addition to doing a good job of defense, such as timely closure of the granary, filling the rat holes and pores and other to prevent rats from entering the granary, the means of dealing with rats are mainly physical control and biological control of two methods.
Physical control is to use rat traps, sticky mouse boards and other physical methods to catch mice, this method is still very effective in the early stage, but the mouse learning ability is very strong and very smart, over time it is no longer deceived, it is difficult to deal with swarms of rats is difficult to play a significant effect.
Some people may ask why not use rat poison, isn't the effect better? In fact, this is mainly for food security considerations, to prevent rats from bringing toxic bait into the granary or rats from dying in the granary and causing food to rot.
After collecting grain, the peasants went to the grain station to hand over the public grain
The second is biological control, mainly to use cats to deal with mice, this method is very safe and effective, the second uncle's grain station has been raising six cats all year round, and it has played an indispensable role in killing rats over the years.
However, in this year, it was inconceivable that this group of hungry rats was so rampant that they were not afraid of cats, and the six cats of the grain station were put into the granary at night, but when the management opened the warehouse the next day, they found that two cats were bitten to death by the rats, and two were seriously injured, and the remaining two were actually scared by the rats and squeezed in a corner shivering.
Rat infestation is getting more and more serious, there are many new rat holes under the thick granary wall, there are hundreds of rats in the granary every day without cat restrictions, so the grain that is eaten is as much as ten cats a day, and there are five or six thousand pounds per year, and the loss is not small.
As the second uncle who was specially responsible for the safety of the granary, he felt very anxious, and one day he secretly brought the family's tanuki cat to the grain station behind his grandfather's back, and after a hungry meal, he put it into the granary alone at night, hoping to reduce some food losses.
Rats burrow into granaries
That night, the second uncle deliberately stayed behind to pay attention to the movement in the granary, and the granary was still quiet when he first came out on patrol in the first half of the night, but when he came out to patrol for the second time in the second half of the night, he heard the chirping sounds of the flocks of rats coming from the granary from a long distance, and listened carefully to occasionally distinguish a few tanuki cat calls from the rat calls of the patches.
The movement in the granary lasted for a long time before it gradually disappeared, so that the second uncle could not help but worry, this tanuki cat is Grandpa's baby, if it is bitten by a mouse, Grandpa has to beat him, it is difficult to stay up until dawn to work time, and quickly let people open the door of the granary.
The second uncle pushed open the door first, and the moment he saw the scene inside, his heart was shocked beyond belief, and the grain mountain piled up in front of him was scattered everywhere from the top to the bottom of the slope.
The rats were very large, most of them died in one bite, and a few died very badly, almost all of them were bitten, and you can imagine what a tragic cat-and-mouse war happened here last night.
Mountains of grain storage in granaries
The second uncle recovered from the shock, but found that he did not see any trace of the tanuki cat, and his eyes quickly looked around, and as a result, he quickly scanned up and down the granary, and did not see the figure of the tanuki cat.
The heart that the second uncle had been hanging on suddenly fell to the bottom, thinking of the ending of the six cats that had been put in before, it seemed that a tanuki cat had fought hundreds of mice, and finally exhausted the terrible scene of being eaten by the rats.
Just when the second uncle was a little discouraged and regretted that he had made such a hasty decision for killing grandpa's favorite tanuki cat, he suddenly heard a soft cat cry from under his feet.
The second uncle looked down and found that it was actually a tanuki cat, at this moment, the hair on his body was somewhat scattered, and it was stained with pieces of blood that had long dried up and did not know whether it was himself or the enemy, and he was rubbing around the feet of the second uncle, which seemed very intimate.
Rampant rat infestation
Looking at the mental state of the tanuki cat, although it looked a little tired, but the strength that belonged to it was still there, it turned out that the second uncle was anxious to check the situation of the granary at the moment when he opened the barn door, and even forgot his feet, and after the tanuki cat defeated all the rats who came to steal the grain, he lay down next to the door rail under the gate and waited for the second uncle to open the door.
The second uncle excitedly picked up the tanuki cat from the ground, and it was praise and rubbing his head, but it made the tanuki cat a little flattered, looking a little uncomfortable, and he wanted to get rid of the second uncle's big hand.
The tanuki cat fought against hundreds of rats alone, and the success of protecting the granary was soon learned by the leaders of the grain station, and while the second uncle was praised, people were also amazed by the divinity of the tanuki cat.
Tanuki cats are sent by Grandpa to the grain station to catch rats
And that tanuki cat lived in the grain station for more than ten years, always stuck to the front line of the granary, fortunately did not fail in its mission, fought with rats one night after another, and saved a lot of grain for the grain station every year.
(Thanks for reading, stay tuned...) [Sun] [Sun]