When living in the country, all of the animals and bugs are so much bigger, at least that is the way it seemed to me.  I do not know why, but they seem to grow larger.  Maybe it is the fresh air and the sunshine and all, but the mosquitos are larger and they bite harder, because the bumps are bigger.  The knats are bigger, and can fly faster, and they hang together in swarms, huge swarms.  Now the rodents grow a lot larger also.  Now one summer while visiting my grandparents, one of my cousins left the back screen door open just a tad.  Now when you lived in the country, at least one porch had to be screened in, this was your sitting and visiting porch, which was the front porch, and the flowers were prettier to look at, even the poppies.  Which are so very illegal, but it was cool back then, and they sure were pretty, those red blooms.  Well at grandma's house the back porch was not screened in.  Well anyway, when he did not close the screen door completely, the knats, flies, and worst of all a field rat came in.  I was sitting at the table, and saw it scurry to a nearby hole in the wall.  I screamed, and so did my grandma.  Oh boy that was most unsettling a rat in the house.  Now some called them mice, field mice, rat, and wharf rat.  It did not matter it did not belong in the house.  My grandma, starting yelling for my grandpa, "Virgil, Virgil there is a rat in my kitchen"!  Grandpa being the calm person that he was, said, "Don't worry Melanie, I'll get it".  Well grandpa apparently saw the fear in my eyes, he said, baby don't worry, I'll catch it, with that I was all right.  Night soon fell on the old country house, and my mind wandered back to the rat.  My sisters and brothers, we got together and said....we are going to take our baths early, we are not going to drink a lot of water or punch, because once we got into the bed, we were not getting up until it was good and daylight.  Grandpa unbeknown to us had set out traps.  On those traps he had put that delicous hoop cheese, lucky rat!  The bedroom that the kids slept in was next to grandma and grandpa's room.  This particular night he left their door open.  Sometime in the night, I heard a large clap.  It was the rat trap catching the rat.  I heard grandpa say, "Melanie I got him".  I figured he meant the rat, so I went on to sleep finally.  Grandpa was up extra early the next morning, and so was grandma.  Grandpa got rid of the rat, and grandma was cleaning her kitchen with bleach.  The reason I know it was bleach the smell woke me up.  Grandma firmly believed in keeping a clean kitchen, she said people have to put this food in their mouths, so she had to make sure it was clean, and she did.  When grandpa came back in he said, "little one, I told you I would take care of it", and he did.   Now I could sleep better at night, and I could walk down that long hall at night without the fear of meeting the "Rat".  It's all a part of Growing up country!