I’ve been at war with rodents.
On the street where I lived in Brixton I’d see them sometimes, big, well fed, three or four convulsing a bin bag. Once, some rats even moved in underneath the tarpaulin on our roof terrace, after the fox, our first tenant, had cleared out. Climbing up the rusty fire escape towards our front door, I’d hear them squeak and see them scurrying away. Sometimes I chased them beneath the stairs, cornered them, and then wondered what, exactly, I’d planned to do. Probably I would have yelped and run away if Mister Ratto ever charged me. Eventually, though, we twigged to the rodent colony, binned the tarp, and rid ourselves of the rats.
Fast forward a year and to a new house, new challenger. These were smaller, less intimidating, more insidious, than their ratty cousins. They chosen method of warfare was psychological. I’d wake in the middle of the night to ‘eek eek eek’, the scratching of mousine claws on some err, protein powder (I can explain…) that I’d foolishly left in my room. I convinced myself it was nothing at first and tried to fall back asleep. Then it came again. I leapt up, full of martial fervour, and saw mus musculus dash across to the wall. I charged, again, a step ahead of myself. What was I planning to do? I didn’t think I could catch it with my bare hands and squeeze the life out of it, like some deranged, rodent-murdering muscleman. Ah-ha! A weapon. But as I slowly, slowly reached up to the shelf for a bottle (I can explain that, too…) my foe made a break for the radiator, popped down a tiny hole and disappeared.
What followed from that night was a gruesome war of attrition: them on my psyche, me on their bodies. I used traps, catching as many as I could, hoping they would back the hell off. They use to run under the skirting board behind my head as I tried to sleep, their scampering echoing in my mind. The war continues to this day – a new campaign has begun as autumn comes.
The point is I’ve been fighting the pests and the pests have been fighting me right back for the past three years. Who started it? Who knows. But in this rodent war, things took an unexpected turn two weeks ago. It was horrible.
I run most weeks in a park near my house. It’s on the slope of a multi-named hill called variously, Denmark Hill, Champion Hill, Red Post Hill, Dog Kennel Hill, I don’t quite know why, but on one side of whatever this hill’s true name is sits Ruskin Park. It’s got a big field on the west side and in the east there’s fenced and gated parkland. Dogs have to be on leads and there’s a pond with nesting moorhens, coots, and other sundry fowl. People like to feed the ducks and the squirrels, rolling up on the weekend with a loaf of bread to dole out. I once thought I saw a water vole – that most English countryside of creatures – actually it was a rat. They come for the bread, which is why the apparently killjoy signs try to warn people off feeding Sir Coot & co, to no avail.
The squirrels have grown fat on this largesse. Given what you’re about to read, you may return to arch an eyebrow at that, but I believe it’s true. It’s certainly true that the parkland section teems with the fearless greyskins.
It was seven thirty in the morning. I was on my third lap of three round the park and feeling it. Drawing air through my lungs was difficult, my calves were hot, my forehead damp with sweat. I was navigating the section just after a little wisteria avenue. I hook a right soon after, on one fork of the narrow path that curves in five long steps down towards the pond, so my course is a little jagged and cramped, as if I’m running a hairpin bend.
There was a squirrel in front of me. He looked up at me and I saw fear in his eyes. He was before me, he was to my left, he was ahead of me, he was across the path escaping, then back on my left, his movements now jerky, panicked. All of a sudden, with acres of space behind him he darted straight across me and under my left heel. His skull cracked like a walnut. I leapt up, shouted ‘JESUS’ and span around to see the squirrel lying motionless on its side in the middle of the path.
A lot of thoughts flashed through my head, the first of which was mercy killing. What if he wasn’t dead, and just mortally wounded? What I’d done was cruel, but it would have been crueller still to leave him there to die slowly, or helplessly in the jaws of some dog its owner had failed to control. I could go back. Yes, go back and stamp on his head. You know, Make Sure. But Ruskin Park in the mornings is a commuter thoroughfare, as well as Squirrel Vietnam. If I returned to the stricken beast to finsh the job, what risk being discovered by someone scampering to make the 7.49? Foot raised, skullcrushing grimace on, I wouldn’t have the time to explain. Besides, there is a difference between accidentally and intentionally killing something. But the truth was, he didn’t look well. The sound underfoot was not a good one.
Horrified by what I’d done – I didn’t even know you could run things over when on foot – I jogged on. Unlike the squirrel. Bet he was wishing he’d not got out of his nest that morning, not gone onto the path, not met me.
Later, I justified his death as merely the latest casualty in the war on rodentry. Collateral damage. An unexpected escalation. My words didn’t even ring true in my own ears. This was a war, suddenly, I didn’t want to be part of.
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