On one of my dad’s trips to the junkyard to find something to fix, he brought home a horizontal shaft Briggs and Stratton motor. It didn’t run, he brought it home for my brother and I to mess around with and possibly learn something. It became an off and on-again thing for us, and eventually we did get it to run. We would fire it up and watch it run. We did notice that it used a lot of oil. One heck of a smokey exhaust.
This was when we lived with my grandfather. Out back of the house was a pretty good sized garage, The only things in it were the shop my grandfather had full of his lathes and drill press and other tools, and a lot of junk. Underneath the garage lived a huge family of rats. Bob and I had a great idea.
We connected a long hose to the exhaust of the motor and stuck it down one of the holes where the rats came and went. We started the motor up, and while it was discharging its noxious discharge, we went and got our .22 rifles and set on the back porch. As the rats escaped out from under the garage, we picked them off.
We lived in the city, and I don’t know how this would go today, but we had fun and solved a problem.
