Chapter 39

CHAPTER XXXIX.

IN the morning we went up to the village and bought
a wire rat-trap and fetched it down, and unstopped
the best rat-hole, and in about an hour we had fifteen
of the bulliest kind of ones; and then we took it and
put it in a safe place under Aunt Sally's bed. But
while we was gone for spiders little Thomas Franklin
Benjamin Jefferson Elexander Phelps found it there,
and opened the door of it to see if the rats would come
out, and they did; and Aunt Sally she come in, and
when we got back she was a-standing on top of the bed
raising Cain, and the rats was doing what they could to
keep off the dull times for her. So she took and
dusted us both with the hickry, and we was as much
as two hours catching another fifteen or sixteen, drat
that meddlesome cub, and they warn't the likeliest,
nuther, because the first haul was the pick of the flock.
I never see a likelier lot of rats than what that first
haul was.

We got a splendid stock of sorted spiders, and bugs,
and frogs, and caterpillars, and one thing or another;
and we like to got a hornet's nest, but we didn't. The
family was at home. We didn't give it right up, but
stayed with them as long as we could; because we
allowed we'd tire them out or they'd got to tire us
out, and they done it. Then we got allycumpain and
rubbed on the places, and was pretty near all right
again, but couldn't set down convenient. And so we
went for the snakes, and grabbed a couple of dozen
garters and house-snakes, and put them in a bag, and
put it in our room, and by that time it was supper-
time, and a rattling good honest day's work: and
hungry? -- oh, no, I reckon not! And there warn't a
blessed snake up there when we went back -- we didn't
half tie the sack, and they worked out somehow, and
left. But it didn't matter much, because they was
still on the premises somewheres. So we judged we
could get some of them again. No, there warn't no
real scarcity of snakes about the house for a consider-
able spell. You'd see them dripping from the rafters
and places every now and then; and they generly
landed in your plate, or down the back of your neck,
and most of the time where you didn't want them.
Well, they was handsome and striped, and there warn't
no harm in a million of them; but that never made no
difference to Aunt Sally; she despised snakes, be the
breed what they might, and she couldn't stand them
no way you could fix it; and every time one of them
flopped down on her, it didn't make no difference what
she was doing, she would just lay that work down and
light out. I never see such a woman. And you could
hear her whoop to Jericho. You couldn't get her to
take a-holt of one of them