Evening star., 1949-08-14
lust Between
Ourselves . . .
BY Philip H. Love

In his This and That column
on the editorial page of The Eve
ming Star, Charles E. Tracewell
asked recently, Are Georgetown
rats the largest?" Then, answer
ing his own question, as writers
have a way of doing, he said, "One
reader thinks So
Well, here's another reader
who also thinks so. Furthermore,
this particular reader meaning
me, of course-thinks Georgetown
rats are brighter than others. The
biggest and brightest rat I ever
saw was a resident of Georgetown.
He was so big and so bright. in
fact, that we named him Super.
We began to get acquainted with
Super about three days after we
moved to Georgetown. We found
him living in our cellar.
The first time I saw him, he dis
appeared so quickly that I mistook
him for a shadow. The second
time, I told my wife:
Il think there's stray cat in
the cellar. When I opened the
door, something big and black
flashed past the foot Of the stairs y
After we had searched the Gel
lar, my wife said: You must have
imagined you saw something. Or.
else, maybe, it was your own
shadow"
But she saw it herself a few days
later-and it was neither a cat
nor a shadow. 1t was Super.
\
Night after night. we set a trap.
But Super stripped It of food with
out once setting it off. Obviously,
he knew all about traps.
Then We scattered pieces OF
poisoned meat about the cellar.
He didn't touch it.
The people who lived there
before tried every way they could
think of to get rid Of that rat"
said the woman next door.
Nothing worked. He was too
smart for them.
when they first moved in." she
continued. "the house was over
run by rats. An exterminator
killed all but that one. Somehow.
he always managed to survive.
The night before they moved
out, they had a farewell party.
When they led the guests into the
dining room, there was the rat
right in the middle of the table.
Even before the ladies could
scream, he had disappeared. They
threw out all the food. of course.
and every one was so angry that
they searched the house over and
over again, but the rat was too
smart for them
+* ~
One night as we sat at dinner,
we heard a noise in the cabinet
under the kitchen sink.
Its Super" my daughter
guessed.
1T really would be super If We
could catch him." said my wife.
"Sh-h-h."
I went to the cellar. armed my
self with baseball bat and stood
directly beneath the sink. My
wife would walk noiSily to the
sink, Super would become fright
ened and scurry down through
the opening for the drainpipe.
Then, before his cleverness could
do him any good, I'd swing the
bat.
Well, he came through the
opening, all right, but before I
could get the bat in motion, he
disappeared into a hole leading
under the back porch. I had
never noticed the hole before. but,
obviously, it had been there all
along, and Super had been using
it as his private entrance.
While I still stood guard with
the bat. my wife found a board 2
inches thick and nailed it over the
hole. Then we examined every
inch of the cellar, to make sure
there were no other holes.
The next morning, we found
huge black rat lying in the alley,
dead. Undoubtedly, it was Super.
And our guess was that, when
he found his private entrance
boarded over, he died of a broken
heart.