Is the Rat Catcher Wearing Trousers?

A few years ago, on a warm sunny afternoon I was returning or going somewhere and stopped at a service station. I had my teckels in the back of the Hilux and opened the rear glass to cool them off while I was stopped. When I came back out of the shop, a man was standing talking to them in the travel cage and they hoovering up the attention, whining and wagging their tails. “Are they a type of terrier”? He asked. I said “well sort of yes, but sort of no, maybe more hound than terrier or more terrier than hound” and he looked puzzled. “They are dachshunds” I said. He replied, “Like a sausage dog”, “Exactly” I said.

There is still to this day, much confusion over the “Teckel” and “Dachshund” terms. I often see posts on online forums where people are still of the opinion, they are different breeds. In the words of the Self-Righteous Brothers, I should say OI, No! A Teckel, a Dachshund and a sausage dog if you wish are the same breed!

Anyway – A few minutes later, after confirming to the gentleman that the “Sausage Dogs” would catch a rat or two, we were following him along a winding road to a recycling plant that he said had a rat or two for them to catch. The road went on for miles, one steep hill after another until we found ourselves quite high on a mountain road outside an Area 51 style building with substantial metal fencing and gates. After getting past the gates, we parked up and followed the man into what could only be described as a super hangar! It was literally several football pitches of space, absolutely crammed to the roof with household rubbish. There a small path along the outside, a path for a digger and several portacabins raised of the ground with conveyor belts leading up to them were rubbish was sorted into categories. I instantly knew it was a no go, a loose Teckel in an area like this would go missing and never be found, there was literally hundreds of tons of rubbish. It was plastic, paper, food waste, glass, metal and everything in between. It was not that the dogs wouldn’t Come back, but it was just too big, too deep and too dangerous for them.

I left my number with him anyway and said if anything changed we would be happy to give it a go, never thinking for a minute anything would change. A few months later the world went into lockdown, the plant closed and my phone rang and before Long I was on the road again back to the plant and had my Teckels with me. Cider, Poppy and Oscar were in tow as we arrived at the plant on a very warm evening to find the once rubbish packed Hangar now looking more like a football pitch and the surrounding walls neatly lined with rubbish bales. The foreman had a small forklift type machine and we wasted no time in getting to work. Initially I kept the Teckels on leads as the machine was driving back and forth and shifting the bales and I didn’t want anyone getting run over. It soon proved too much and they had to be loose as there were just too many rats going too many directions! Every time the machine grabbed a bale, the driver would lift it a few inches high and reverse back and the rats would literally explode from under and around the bale. The Teckels would be going every direction and it was complete chaos with rats going everywhere, dogs grabbing and shaking them and moving onto the next. It became apparent very quickly who liked this job and who didn’t. Surprisingly, my bitch “Cider” wasn’t the keenest and got her nose nipped several times by not killing the rats quick enough. From probably about 6 months old, Cider had a propensity to go to ground and has flushed many foxes from earths in her time and has a passion for working below ground, but ratting just wasn’t her Forte. She did it of course and killed quite a few but the passion wasn’t there. “Oscar” who died a couple of years ago and was a great old Teckel for hunting foxes from cover was more interested in the many feral cats ion the plant and was distracted a few times, pursuing them round the Hangar while baying loudly. He didn’t do too bad at the rats either but always looked like a child eating vegetables he doesn’t want!

Poppy

Poppy – Granddaughter of the famous “Dachskrieger Amadeus” and the best retrieving Teckel I have ever owned, really excelled. So much so, that I had to take her outside and dunk her in a bath of cold water to cool her down. It was almost as if a switch flicked in Poppys brain as soon as the rats began to move. She was determined that none were escaping and as she killed one, she moved onto the next one and the next one – Killing two or three on the ground and jumping up at the bale to catch escapees that the others missed – On several occasions I saw her pursue a rat and as another dog snatched it up, rather than wasting time attempting to snatch it from the other dog as some do, she simply spun round went for the next one. There was no issue with her getting bit because she hit the rats so hard and shook them so vigorously, they were dead before they hit the ground. As she killed one after the other, I could see her breathing heavier and heavier, foaming at the mouth and getting increasingly worked up…I decided to take her out for a break and to let her cool down and this was when, as I said earlier – I came across a large tank of fresh water and soaked in it for a couple of minutes to calm her a little. By the time this happened, it looked like we had caught quite a few rats and one of the lads from the plant was collecting them up in a pile. We moved on to a different area, which was one that held hundreds upon hundreds of plastic bottles and the plant manager showed me a few where the corners had been chewed, and every one I lifted was the same. It seemed that the rats chewed through the plastic to get at the remainder of the liquid that was inside. As one of the other lads waded through the bottles that were surrounded in a type of weld mesh about three foot high, the rats again exploded from everywhere, I could see them scooting out from everywhere and the dogs were going haywire again, with young Poppy leading the charge. This time, the rats seemed to be all taking one route towards a huge of carboard and we moved to cut them off as the dogs got behind them – What I always find fascinating is the fear that some people have of rats – One of the lads there was well over 6ft sand built like a tank, a big agricultural type lad that probably held up the tractor to change the wheel! He came along with a friend that worked at the plant, and was genuinely petrified of the rats! He kept well back at all times and when a runner went his direction a couple of times, he took off sprinting through the shed in his John Deere boilersuit and wellies that he had wrapped around the top with duct tape!

The last rat hunting escapade I had before this was along an old railway line where someone had dumped several tons of old rotting barley and the rats had arrived by the lorry load. On that particular occasion we had a Teckel, two Lurchers, two German Pointers and a Staffordshire Bull Terrier who was man of the match and had a knack for the job. It was easy digging and we also used an old 2 stroke strimmer with a copper pipe on the exhaust and overmixed the fuel, it worked very well.

The night in the shed was drawing to a close and we started to collect the rats, ten, twenty, thirty…Someone else brought twenty and then another ten here and ten there and we ended up with 99 which I couldn’t have – So we set off through the bales again aiming for one and returned with three, and left it at 102 for a couple of hours work. The dog noses were cut and stinging and I had a terrible strange taste in back of my throat and a foul black dust-like substance in my boilersuit. We lined up the rats like a driven shoot day for a photo and decided to call it a night. I was going straight home so I took the boilersuit off and stuffed it in a plastic bag and jumped into the pickup in my boxers, wellies and a T Shirt, which was later to be a mistake….

As it was during the lockdown period, travel was restricted to essential work only, so we were essential work. I was driving home that night and enjoying the tranquillity of the main roads that had next to no traffic on them along with the stillness in the air that many of us will remember. I turned off a road and onto another road and suddenly met a police check point. Two female officers spoke to the vehicle in front before he moved on and they ushered me forward – As one officer came to my window, the other went to the other side of the road to stop a car going the opposite way. “Where are you going” she asked, to which I replied “Home”. She then asked me where I had been to which I replied, “Doing some work”. She then enquired what the work was to which I replied “Catching Rats” – I wasn’t going to lie because there was no other “essential” reason I could think of for coming home with 4 Teckels while in my boxers at midnight. Her next question was “How were you catching them”? And I could sense some suspicion in her voice, to which I replied “With Dogs” and she replied, “Where are the dogs” and I said, “In the back” and of course she asked to see them. I took a deep inward breath and said “No problem at all, but before I get out I have to tell you I am not wearing trousers” To which she smiled and said “That’s fine”. I opened the door, swung my very pale shanks which were disappearing into my wellies outwards and down onto the road, and stood in my finest Dunnes Stores underwear and tattersall shirt, complete with Tweed flat cap, my dignity only saved by the low light. I headed towards to rear of my pickup when a large vehicle came round the corner with his full led lights on and light me up like a Christmas Tree – Im sure the officer had never saw anything quite like it! I opened the canopy, and she peered inside to see four Teckels peering back out. She looked back at me in the Lorry lights…not even knowing what to say and just said “Thanks”. I climbed back in, and made for home where I washed the dogs, myself and the inside of the canopy before getting to bed.

The next day the strange taste was still in my throat and as the evening came I had to go and collect some work stuff in the city and my wife went with me. As we rounded the same corner the check point was at the same place and it looked like the two same police officers – The one who had stopped me the previous night was at the opposite side of the road this time, her colleague asked me for my license which gave her. She asked where I was going and I explained – Her colleague called from across the road and said “Is that the rat catcher” to which she replied “Yes” and she shouted back, “I hope hes got his trousers on today”!