David as Rat Bait

 


Cleaning up my computer "Documents" file, I found this note from David Sampson that I hadn't posted yet:

My first memory (I think it is a memory; it may be that I was told it later and it has somehow been more or less ‘converted’ to a memory within my brain) is from the time we lived in one of the basement apartments below the joint (the tavern operated by Eli Sampson in Coos Bay).  I was still sleeping in a crib and a rat gained access to the apartment by swimming in through the toilet!  Anyway, the rat evidently crawled up into my crib looking for food (possibly me!), mom spotted it, let out a blood-curdling scream, dad leaped out of bed, swatted the rat out of the crib, and chased the rat around the little apartment until it was able to leap back into toilet and swim back out.  I remember glimpses of that scene although I only recall mom and dad, not a rat.  According to Dad, the rat kept trying to get back in all night long, trying to gnaw his way in from somewhere.  The next day Dad/Granddad had the toilet re-plumbed with a rat baffle system to prevent another instance of that kind.  Within a few months, Granddad had finished building our house and we moved into it.