geography, gaia and interconncetions between animal behavior and and humans

Second story is a repost. with new commentary

My house is near the highest spot in the County which was once important as the highest elevation on the Ohio and Erie canals. The land slopes down from that elevation point on the Ohio Canal and unusual behavior by animals is known to occur there. One year an usually large number of rats congregated at that highest spot in my County, along the Ohio canal and then unexpectedly a migration downward from that highest spot suddenly occurred sending thousands of large rats scurrying through our neighborhoods.

an unpleasant story

fiction
edward w pritchard

I lived in a part of the City, trying to pass as a suburban neighborhood, quiet respectable, neat lawns with lots of older people. At 2:06 AM I awoke with a chemically induced sensation in my mind, caused by hearing and feeling an unnatural phenomena somewhere just outside my house;  producing a terror that something was horribly wrong in my neighborhood. I was not having a nightmare but the sense of dread and foreboding was chemical in nature and I couldn't shake the horror, although I had done nothing to cause it. I knew that the solution to what was wrong was just outside my door.

A low rumble met me as I exited my house and at a guttural level I sensed the movement of thousands of animals. My neighbor rushed to me as I left my home to warn me that we were needed at the bottom of our street about a quarter of a mile east of my house. It was unseasonably hot and humid as I hurried South by East and the unnatural rhythmic sound and smell of the movement of animals became stronger as I entered the street.

Hundreds of thousands of rats were running through the sewer networks beneath our road and I was stationed at the sewer at the bottom of our hill, given a baseball bat and for the next four hours I clubbed hundreds and hundreds of rats who in confusion left the rush Eastward and attempted to exit into our neighborhood. My neighbor who also had a bat told me that rats were coming up into houses through drains and things and over a hundred thousand had exited the sewers at the small creek a mile or so east of the end of my street. After about four hours I collapsed from the labor and combat and was given a half hour break. In a minute or two I must return to work for it's my turn again to man the sewer opening with the bat.

end