Rats!

My Grandparents (Thomas Earl Garrett and Grace Garrett) house on Jefferson St. (and the houses surrounding it), were literally infested with rats. You could set a jillion traps and not be rid of the rats!

Now we are not talking cute little field mice here, but big huge rats!

It was so bad that there was a ‘stick’ in a corner of each room (usually from the bottom of an old window blind), to beat them off with!

In fact, my half-sister Donna Fuqua was badly bitten by one of them in the middle of the afternoon while taking a nap (I remember it well – though I was younger than she was.) In her sleep, she had let her hand dangle out of the crib slats, and a rat almost bit off one of her fingers.
I remember her screaming, crying, and her Mother, Irene Fuqua, rushing to pick her up. Her hand was bleeding profusely. It was such a bad bite; they even took her to a doctor (a rare event for such a poverty household.) Her hand was bandaged for days.