Hunting was big in Wisconsin. My uncles and some of my brothers were hunters. All the burly farm-bred boys in my neighborhood were hunters. During deer hunting season, we regularly saw dead dear strapped to the roof of cars. Hunting season also produced the predictable news of the tragic deaths of improperly clad hunters and children mistaken for deer. We had guns in our house. When the boys were young, their first one was a bb gun. Later they got pellet guns, and finally 22 caliber rifles- larger if they stuck with it and showed commitment to the sport.
After the barn burned down and winter set in, all the rodents who’d resided in the barn came to the house in search of warmth and food. I was terrified of rats and had the misfortune of seeing one climb the stairs to our bedrooms one afternoon. I laid in bed many nights petrified, soothing myself by imagining that rats and mice were unable to climb bedposts.
One night Go-Go Mom was having a little solo party, drinking and talking on the telephone. I don’t remember what woke me up, or if it was gun shots. When I got downstairs I saw her, perched on a stool, the furnace grate in the floor removed, a beer and cigarette resting on the telephone table, and a shot gun aimed at the heating duct. She had decided to take on the rat population by leaving food in the heating duct and, once the rats scurried into her sight, shooting them. I asked her what she was doing and she ignored me. Finally during a break in her telephone conversation she told me she was taking care of our little problem and to go to sleep. I went back to bed with more than just rats to fear.
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