Sgt. Mike Viet Nam Humor

The hooch I lived in had some good ol' boys in it. One hot night we were trying to get some sleep when you could hear the little varmints on the floor. All of a sudden about six bayonets came flying. The mice/rats survived the barrage.
While on guard duty I was replacing some Marines that had the previous 30 days. The bunker was in front of a large swamp. I was told to stay awake until about 0100. The largest rat I have ever seen was at the edge of the swamp. It was the size of a small dog. The previous occupant of the bunker had fed the rat with crackers from his c-rats. We continued for the next 30 days. Our relief offed the rat.
A factory rep was sleeping and had his hand hanging near the floor. He was bitten by a mouse/rat. He had to get rabies shots. The fun we had.


Stars & Stripes had a contest when I was in Da Nang for the largest rat alive or dead. The winner was a 22 inch rat.

Our aircraft used liquid oxygen for the aircrews to breathe during flight. We had a LOX Plant in our compound. The guys running the LOX Plant would catch rats and dip them in the LOX and freeze them and then shatter them like a piece of glass.
 
Rats, think they were the National animal of Vietnam. Sound asleep one night( no guard duty!) when something fell on my chest waking me up. Yep, big rat size of a US house cat looking back at me. Needless to say the whole hootch got up as it ran, boots, helmets and who knows thrown at it. The Largest rats I saw were around Newport near the docks, size between sausage dogs and beagles. Knew guys that shot them with M-16s and didnt get in trouble.
 
Rats, think they were the National animal of Vietnam. Sound asleep one night( no guard duty!) when something fell on my chest waking me up. Yep, big rat size of a US house cat looking back at me. Needless to say the whole hootch got up as it ran, boots, helmets and who knows thrown at it. The Largest rats I saw were around Newport near the docks, size between sausage dogs and beagles. Knew guys that shot them with M-16s and didnt get in trouble.

I was eating MidRats (Midnight Rations) in a bunker while on guard at Da Nang. Had a piece of bread on the edge of my plate. A couple of times it fell down. About the third time I went to pick it up, I felt something furry. I came unglued grabbing for my M-16. The guy I was on post with thought I had gone crazy. Then I started yelling rat and he grabbed his M-16. By that time the rat was gone. Needless to say I did not eat that piece of bread!
 
When I was a youngster my grandfather knew the owners of the grain docks in the Port of Seattle. My grandfather got us (my older brother and I) work killing the wharf rats. We would get 5 cents per rat killed. We each had .22 rifles, and a box of .22 LR cost $.50. The easiest way to make money was to shoot one rat and then wait for the others to come out and eat on that one. usually that gave you 3-4 shots before they would get hidden again. One day I was up on the joist of the rafters and a rat was coming across the joist toward me, and he didn't look happy. I waited until he was about three feet away before I shot him. The owner said I deserved a dime for that one. Gawd I hate rats more than I hate spider webs. I do want you to know, if you put 40 grains of lead in a rat's ear, they cannot swim any more. It upsets their center of gravity or something.
 
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Burning rat races were fun, especially if your rat won. A live trap from the world was required.
It was tradition. We made traps out of different size cans stacked end to end. The rats aren't smart enough to turn around and get trapped. Flaming rats.

We had a guy who would tie a noose around them when the got trapped in a 55 gal drum outside the hangar. He would walk his pet around for a while before killing it. Funny he never got bitten by a rat. Ah, the fun we had.
 
It was tradition. We made traps out of different size cans stacked end to end. The rats aren't smart enough to turn around and get trapped. Flaming rats.

We had a guy who would tie a noose around them when the got trapped in a 55 gal drum outside the hangar. He would walk his pet around for a while before killing it. Funny he never got bitten by a rat. Ah, the fun we had.

W-1 Pojo (for short) got a trap from his parents because he was tired of them rampaging around his hooch at night. He would put them in a 55 gal. drum and reset the trap. The next day we would pour in some JP-4, light it and kick the barrel over.

Annnnd, there off! It never seemed to put a dent in the rat population though. There was a dump East of the perimeter that probably fueled the infestation.
 
Thinking about that dump, (remembered it was on the West side, not the East). Any way, one day some folks game up with a new weapon to test. The Quad LAW. A few of us went out to the dump to witness a live fire test. It was pretty impressive but ungainly. I don't think it ever went into production.
 
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Now days a variety of organizations would protest you rat runs. You having to live with rats while being shot at, not so much.
 
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Now days a variety of organizations would protest you rat runs. You having to live with rats while being shot at, not so much.

Picture and laugh line reminds me of the day I was attacked by a mud dauber at my grandfather's house. I was in the garage cutting some wood on his table saw for his self-made camper bus and a mud dauber decided I was making trouble for her/him and he flew at me and stung me on my lower lip. I let out a scream I'm fair sure was heard ten miles away in Topeka. Granddad thought I'd cut myself on the saw and came running, grandma thought the same and the girl I was sweet on that lived up the street didn't know what happened, but she came too. With my lower lip swollen to the size of a basketball (I thought so anyway) I told them what happened. Grandpa got a can of wasp spray and made short work of the mud daubers hanging from the rain gutters. I got some tenderizer on the sting and some much needed comfort for my fear of mud daubers. I never knew until then that the best cure for a mud dauber sting was to kiss it away.
 
Wow, must have been some really mad mud daubers, ones around here don't bother humans. They are all black and if you bust open one of the mud tubular nest they are full of spiders, mud dauber eggs in the back.
 
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