RECENTLY, Millie our Jack Russell, has been proudly bringing us an extraordinary number of little rats as presents for the back door mat. Normally she leaves the rats she has killed virtually in situ, but these she must have decided are a special treat for us. They are hastily binned.

Then yesterday I saw her snap one up from near our old coal house. No longer in use for its original purpose, we have an oil-fired heating system and cooker, it has become the receptacle for all manner of junk. In fact, you could hardly fight your way in with all the old bikes, trikes, peddle cars and outside toys piled in there for the winter. So with spring here and summer on the way, time to have a good clear out and see if the rats had made a home in the shed.

They have. But underneath it. A huge pile of pebbles dug up from under the concrete laid by John for hard standing in the farm yard, has been dragged out and into the shed. A deep hole in the corner revealing the rats front door to their secure des res. Mille went mad. The stink of rat urine, the piles of rat poo, bliss to a ratting terrier. And even another baby rat to catch before it scurried back down the hole. Millie was hysterically keen to scratch the entrance even bigger, but as John had by now put some rat poison in the hole, that was not desirable.

A few hours later and the hole was filled in and we had removed three sacks of stone pebbles from the shed. It must have taken the rats weeks to dig out, but I am afraid I do not feel any sense of remorse for what we have done. A few years ago a close friend was bitten by a rat and went on to develop a severe variety of leptospirosis known as Weil’s disease. He was very ill, and as it can prove fatal, very lucky to overcome the infection with no long lasting effects. There is no such thing as a good rat on a farm. Millie knows that.

So I now have, joy of joys, both an empty and a clean shed. Nature and me, however, abhors a vacuum. At the moment I have nothing to fill it with, but as John noted, give me time and I am sure I will.

I have good reason to wait. Last year, John filled in another hole the rats had dug out under the cement of the granary floor. Only discovered when we were cleaning out in the spring. As he did yesterday, he filled the hole in with cement, but a day later, while the cement was still soft, they dug their way out. They will find it harder this year. There’s a heavy breeze block on top.