Joe Butterman and the rats
He was shrewd, always. He had a tractor earlier than most and made the price of it 10 times over by cutting meadows for neighbours still without one. He had about five extra blades, always as sharp as himself, and a stock of spare parts he was well able to fit himself, to avoid lost time. He also fitted the tractor with extra headlights so he could cut by night, even through the whole night sometimes, when the real madness of the haymaking season came.
He loved money, the way some men love drink or cards. They tell me he would fondle a fiver with his fingers when he was paid.
He made plenty of it, and the more he made, the less he spent.
He never married. He looked after his ageing parents very well, when the time came. The mother was the last of the two to go. Joe Butterman did not weep at the graveside.
Two neighbours who owed him money paid him that day, before he came back from the chapel, and another man, with the weather breaking, made a deal with him to come cutting the next morning. The man said later he was desperate, or he would not have asked on such a day, and he said that Joe Butterman did not mind at all.
Four or five years ago, after that long sunny summer, there was a desperate plague of rats and mice in the district.
Twice and three times the normal population. They’re a problem anyway, the rats especially, but this year, they were so bad that some lads brought in professional exterminators, even though they cost the price of a good bull calf. Others spent a small fortune on poisons and gas.
Joe Butterman was especially hard hit. He was one of the biggest silage contractors in the region at this stage, employing two drivers constant during the season, and he had a big, warm shed with a fortune’s worth of expensive equipment inside. The rats invaded when the cold snap came. They destroyed all before them, but especially did damage to the electric cables for all the tools Joe needed for servicing and repairs. Whatever was in the rubber, they went mad for it. They caused shorting and damage all over the place.
Once, they nearly burned the place down. And they got into the ceiling of the dwelling house too. Joe Butterman had a big cage for years, for trapping rats. He used bait it with cheese smeared with goose grease, in normal years. Lethal. Nothing for him to come out in the morning and find five or six big ones within.
He was a cold customer. Several people saw him pouring boiling water over that trap to give a horrific end to those unfortunate creatures.
This bad year, though, he did something very different, very devious.
An Englishman who’d worked in a distillery told him the trick. Joe Butterman caught five big rats in the cage one morning. Instead of killing them, he left them out in the corner of the yard. Inside the week, they turned cannibal. It was dreadful to see.
After 12 days, there was just one fat rat left alive. Joe Butterman released that fellow back into the shed. The cannibal went to work at once. There were foul sounds from the loft for days, and then silence. The cannibal could not have eaten them all, so he must have chased away the survivors. The problem seemed solved.
Last autumn, Joe Butterman came back with the tractor and trailer, late on a Thursday evening. Millane saw him driving into the shed and closing the big door about ten o’clock.
He probably got a heart attack, as he dismounted the tractor, but they will never be sure about that. He was not found until late on Sunday evening. By then, there was hardly anything left but bones. The cannibals even devoured his wallet.
