I brake for rats!

Today I swerved to avoid hitting a rat in the street. It was sitting on it's hind haunches and eating smashed leftovers and I slowed, recognized it was a rat, and swerved. Here in Northern California, as in other areas, rats are disgusting, carriers of disease, and I swerved. What has happened to the little girl who used to put a stone on the body of a daddy long legs and proceed to pick off, one by one, the spiders legs, or the girl that used to burn to toast any handy bug that I could put under my magnifying glass? Do you know that I now go out of my way to carefully trap bugs in my house so I can release them in the backyard? President Spencer Kimball told of a song called, "Don't kill the little birdies," that changed how he forever saw any living species. We once had a mole in our front yard that was destroying the many dollars worth of landscaping that we had invested in. We tried everything, and finally Roy plugged up all the holes but one, then flooded the routes out, all the while waiting with a shovel to crack his skull. He finished the job, came in the house, took a shower and came out still shivering. It was a horrible experience that he even teared up over. And.....I'm glad he did. Cliched as it is, life becomes precious the older you get, and in animal years I'm ancient. I'm glad, I think, that I "brake for rats," although I don't think I'll put that on my bumper sticker.