If you’ve been following the news lately, I’m sure you’ve heard by now that feed mills all across the United States have been exploding or catching fire recently. This phenomenon is relatively uncommon. As a former feed mill worker, they explain all of the risks when we are being trained and how to effectively prevent fires in the workplace, considering the potential danger of large-scale explosions and fires that feed dust poses. One of the most recent reports of an explosion has been.. inaccurate.
For my own safety and for the sake of anonymity, I won’t tell you which location it is, but I will tell you what happened at the feed mill I worked at until recently. As many people in the food industry will tell you, wherever there is any kind of food being processed or worked with, rats and mice are a commonplace issue. It’s no different in feed mills, and we have to work tirelessly to combat infestations and root them out as quickly as possible. It doesn’t necessarily always work.
You could find rats almost anywhere you looked hard enough in the feed mill, scurrying along the ground trying to get inside of the walls, on top of light fixtures, in the ceiling, anywhere really. But while my coworkers had a mindset of killing the rats, I had a mindset of preservation and relocation.
I don’t enjoy taking life, of any kind. It’s ironic considering my love for eating meat, but something about taking the life myself, without actual cause for survival? It doesn’t sit right with me. And rats are known to be intelligent, extremely so. More than you possibly know, actually. So taking their lives felt like even more of a sin to me.
So that’s what I began to do. Instead of killing rats or letting them go, I began to catch any I could. Slippery little bastards didn’t want to be caught, but I managed to catch at least 10 or so a week by being kind. I’d offer them a little food, lead them onto my hand, and gently cup them to prevent them from jumping out and possibly hurting themselves. Then all I had to do was take them outside and let them run off on their own.
I know they were probably safer from predators in the feed mill, and that by putting them outside I exposed them to more risk, but they had a better chance of survival outside than in the mill, where we often had exterminators and fumigators come by.
They started taking notice of my kindness, though. It was kind of strange at first. I’d notice one or two rats staring at me curiously from afar, and they’d inch closer to me. I’d offer them some leftover feed to eat, considering that’s all they really wanted, and usually they would just scurry off back to their hiding place. If they were small enough, I’d attempt to relocate them, and if they were too big I would simply let them go. And they got to be enormous inside the mill. 3 or 4 feet long wasn’t uncommon at all.
I started to notice them hanging around me more and more since the machine I worked on required me to be in the same place for many hours a day. The rats would congregate on the light fixtures above my head and on the lips of the trusses on the ceiling. I didn’t really think much of it until I began to notice a single, smaller rat frequently visiting my machine.
Instead of the grey or dark coat that was common amongst the rats of the mill, this one had a jet black coat and a grey tail, with a single ring of gold coloring about midway up his tail. I tried to lure him over to me with the food trail I normally do, but it wasn’t needed. This one ran straight to my hands and hopped on. For any of you who don’t know, this is extremely strange behavior for a wild rat. Domesticated rats and mice might do this since they’re used to their human wanting to give them love and attention. Wild rats normally fear and avoid humans.
Upon closer examination of the rat, I noticed that what should have been beady black orbs for eyes had a spot of yellow in the direct center. A mutation? Some sort of disease? I wasn’t sure, but I figured this rat wouldn’t make it outside for very long, so instead of taking him outside to what could be his death, I let him stay in my hands for a while.
“Hello, my little friend.” I cooed gently to the creature. He seemed to like the sound of my voice. He sat back on his haunches and sniffed at me with a gentle squeaking noise. I raised a thumb and gently rubbed his side and head, cautious not to nudge too hard. The other rats seemed to notice how much attention and care I treated this one with, since I heard gentle squeaking from the crowd of gathered rats above me, like the cooing of a mother approving of her son or daughter’s choice of companion.
The rat made a strange gesture that caught my attention, and he started to rear up and gently touch his forepaws to my hand. “Oh, do you want down, buddy?” I asked, like most humans do when talking to a pet, not expecting a response. Strangely, he nodded. I smiled at him, not really thinking that a rat had just understood me and that it was sheer coincidence.
I gently lowered my body to the floor and spread my fingers from the locked cup position, allowing the rat to hop safely off onto the ground. “Run along little buddy, it’s dangerous around this machine and I don’t want any of you getting hurt.” The tiny rat ran off beneath the conveyor system and disappeared into the darkness.
I looked up, noticing how quiet it had gotten, and saw that the rats that normally watched me like vultures from on high were gone.
The next few days went by relatively easily, and without much activity from the rats who normally visit me. Apparently, one or two of my coworkers took notice of my interactions with the rats and began to make fun of me for it. Call me names, tell me if I loved the rats so much just to join them in the basement, that kind of thing. Working in manual labor fields, you don’t really put much stock in that kind of chiding and insulting behavior. Everyone does it, and you just have to get used to it and fire back.
I did notice that the cat population had gone down recently, though. On top of the rats that had swarmed the mill, there was also a population of cats that called the mill home. Mostly feeding on the rats, I imagine. They kept mostly to themselves, and despite being former outdoor housecats, presumably, they were skittish. Not wanting to be seen or interact with humans. Although, I guess I can understand since most of the people in the mill wanted to either kill them or capture them violently.
One day after I began my shift began, I was informed of a tragic turn of events. Almost all of the cats that had documented sightings in the mill had been viciously slaughtered. Not by human means, either. According to the person who found the scene it was “Like a slaughterhouse of cats. Bits of ‘em everywhere with holes the size of bullets in ‘em, but more jagged and fang-like. Poor things.” Bite marks the size of bullet hole entry wounds..
Even stranger activity began when I went to the 4th floor one day to check the storage bin that fed my machine. I went into the stuffy room full of feed dust and mold inhibitor to check my bin, as first shift rarely if ever filled it for me, and I needed to see how much, if any, feed I had to make product with. But I saw two of the bigger rats inside the room where my bin was. I saw them with a smaller rat, apparently intimidating the rat towards the edge of the bin. What kind of transgression occurred? What would push these rats to force the other to its doom?
I ran over quickly and shouted, “Hey! Stop that!” I closed the distance between us and stood over the rats, concerned over the cowering rat between the two large ones and the lip of the bin. I bent over and scooped the cowering rat into my hands and backed out of the room. I could see the two larger ones looking at me with.. something that almost seemed to be satisfaction. If they had a human face, it felt like you could see that smirk of satisfaction on that face. They looked at one another and then began to bound away.
I took the smaller rat to the first floor with me, a little unsettled by the interaction between the rats, and their interaction with me. Had I imagined that feeling? Had I imagined the satisfied chirping between the two? I didn’t know at the time and simply decided to release the rat on the first floor, not wanting to expose this rat to more danger than it was apparently already in. “Go on, little buddy, don’t let them get you down.” The rat squeaked at me and ran off. I began to feel more and more as I interacted with these creatures that, even if they didn’t understand English, they understood my meaning well enough.
A few weeks went by with nothing really out of the ordinary happening, except for the fact that I hadn’t seen the little black rat with the gold ringed tail. After our first interaction, he frequented my machine for a couple of weeks, and I’d gotten to know his likes and patterns, almost what he wanted to do or if he wanted food at a glance. I cared for that little rat, and the other rats seemed to do the same. But after that interaction with the rat on the 4th floor, I didn’t see my little friend for a while.
I started to notice the rats were getting larger. The ones who frequented my machine.. well, I thought they were at their maximum size considering how humongous a 3 or 4-foot-long rat is. That wasn’t the case, as I noticed they were putting on more bulk and getting larger in both height and length. I thought surely they couldn’t get much bigger than what they were at this point. I was wrong.
Shortly after resigning to not seeing my little friend again, I was called by management to perform a task for them in the basement, alone. “A simple thing, just go down there and check the pipes and breakers down there. We’re having a few malfunctions with water and electric surges today, and we don’t know why. Maintenance is busy fixing the shorts caused up here by the surges, and since there are only 2 of them and your machine is down, you’ll go down there and check it for us.”
I hated the idea of going down into the basement. Despite my relationship with the rats, I still didn’t exactly like the idea of having them in the shadows stalking me or being able to get on my body without my notice. Orders were orders, though, and if I wanted to keep my job, I guess I just had to follow them. So I walked into the small man-elevator and descended into the darkness.
I was immediately assaulted with a miasma of stench when I walked through the door into the basement. Something like a mix of cat excrement, decaying flesh, blood, and rotting animal feed. I pulled my shirt up a little so that the lip of it covered my nose and pushed forward towards the area where the breakers were. They were down a long hallway, with a few different diverging paths, but signage informed me of my path. I was forced to a halt on my path, though, stopped by a horrifying sight.
Rats, the largest I’ve ever seen in that facility, swarmed the ground, walls, and ceiling on the path to the breakers. They had to be almost man-sized in length, if not a little more. They were using their almost chef’s knife-sized incisors to bite their way through piping and wires on the ceiling, and the ones on the ground were eating the remains of the rats who’d fallen victim to exterminator poison and fumigation… and the remains of some of the cats they’d dragged back down here.
I gasped and dry-heaved at both the sight and stench of it all, and the rats almost all collectively stopped and turned to look at me. Their beady eyes glinted in the low light, but they seemed to recognize me. One of the larger ones approached me and halted in front of me. I instinctively took a step back, but he walked forward, slowly, gently grabbing hold of my pant leg and sinking its claws in, like it was trying to communicate that it wanted me to stay.
Instead of kicking the rat off and running, I bent down to him, and he reared up on his haunches, and we were now face to face. He pointed one of his paws down a diverging hallway as if pointing me in a direction they wanted me to go. With an army of rats in front of me, and skittering claws clacking all around me, I didn’t have much of a choice. I followed orders.
As I approached the dead-end of this hallway, I noticed a shape moving, a gargantuan shape. It was the height of a man, but animalistic in nature. It was getting up from a lying down position and it turned its head towards me to open its eyes and see me. I saw the eyes of pure gold, with orange streaks, staring at me intensely. I remembered a rat that had almost golden eyes… it was the tiny black rat, no longer tiny, now the apex. The King of the Rats.
“Li..tool.. friend.” I heard a voice like the rasping of the wind through the leaves of an autumn eave combined with the rattling of clashing machinery say to me. I had to lean against the wall as the massive creature stepped into the low light from its dark recess. I was terrified and dry heaving from fright and disgust, unsure of what to do. I tried to gather myself and turned towards the King of the Rats. “Hey, little buddy,” I said with a shaking voice.
“You’ve grown up, haven’t you?” the King stood silently in front of me for a moment, and he nuzzled my body, almost knocking me to the ground, but I could tell from the force that he didn’t intend to do that. He wanted to show affection. “Leeeeeeave… this plaaace…” he rasped at me. “Run as faaaaast… and faaaar as you can. This will… only be rubble and… dust soon.” it hit me. The reason the rats were chewing through the wires and pipes. It was to cause a spark, to cause a dust explosion.
I gave the King a pat on the head, “What about you little buddy? You want to cause an explosion and fire? You’ll die!” the King simply snorted and tilted his head back slightly, making a noise that was somewhat of a mockery of a laugh. “Go… lit..tool friend. Be..gone!” he shoved me with his head and made a rumbling hissing noise. I followed orders. I ran.
I ran as fast and hard as my legs could take me, pumping them to the limit before reaching the elevator. A horde of rats was inside the elevator shaft, chewing cables and crawling up towards the surface. I hit the up button and the elevator crawled upwards toward the first floor. I had plenty of time to watch them wait in the elevator shaft to chew through wires, carrying the sparking remnants upwards to the feed bins. The area with the most amount of feed dust.
I sprinted out of the elevator as soon as it locked itself on the first floor, and I heard a loud snap and a distorted whirring noise, along with the elevator crashing downwards. They’d chewed through the cable, just moments after I made my escape. A swarm of rats poured from the elevator shaft behind me and surged forward into the mill proper, some, the smaller and weaker, running to escape. Others swarm to fire hazards and… some of the workers there.
I ran as fast as my legs could take me to the office and slammed my hand on the fire alarm, picking up the intercom phone right next to it. “Everyone, drop what you’re doing and evacuate the facility! There are multiple fires in the building, in especially high risk areas!” I slammed the phone back on its hook and noticed multiple workers running to evacuate. If not from the fire and the announcement, then damn sure from the rats. Many of them had serious wounds from the horde of rats clawing and biting almost 2 inch holes in various parts of their bodies.
Protocol be damned at this point, we all ran for our vehicles and tried to get as far away as possible before the whole facility went up in flames, or worse, exploded with the force of God knows how many tons of dynamite. The first one to break from the parking lot was the largest truck that anyone had. It tore through the guardhouse gate like a bat out of hell, and almost all of us followed suit through the destroyed gate. The fire broke out soon afterwards.
I was a few miles away from the facility when it happened, as I think we all were. I learned from the police report that the upper floors were the first to go, lost in an explosion that shook the surrounding area like a small earthquake, but the facility only burned from there, luckily. An investigation was launched, and the employees were questioned. All of us, even me, claimed to not know anything, because what police officer would be insane enough to believe what I witnessed?
It was ruled an accident. No foul play was found, and I believe it’s mostly because the basement had collapsed and they couldn’t find the surviving rats, if any did, and the chewed cables.
But I know that some did survive. I visited the burned down mill a few months later, feeling despondent not only over the loss of everyone’s jobs but over the potentially charred hoard of rats that I once socialized with.
The mill itself was a heap of blackened scrap and smoking ruin. The remains of machinery and abandoned vehicles were strewn about like a canvas of destruction. I noticed some rustling in the rubble and saw a tiny rat. I walked over to him, and he seemed to either not notice me, or didn’t care that I was there. I had on my old working gloves and leaned over, cupping my hands in front of me.
I gave him a sad smile, “Hey little friend, you new around here, or are you one of the survivors?” I asked him dumbly, knowing I’d get no response. The tiny rat hopped into my hands, and curled up as though he were comfortable enough with me to sleep in my hands like a bed. I heard that wheezing, wind-scratching voice again that I still remember from the basement. The one that prevails in my mind as a friend who lost his way and only wanted peace for his kind. “Lit..tool… friend.” The tiny rat resting on my hands poked his head up and scurried to a small hole in the rubble.
I was satisfied. There were survivors, and it may seem cruel to you that I was more satisfied with surviving rodents than the fact that human beings were injured, but I don’t see it that way. Our cruelty was met with their cruelty, and in the end, they didn’t take any of our lives. They only wanted a place to call home.