Springtime has arrived here at the Anthony Organic Dog Ranch with the fanfare of increased animal activity.

I made my way to the garden shed below the deck. It's a concrete bunker that adjoins the foundation with a fiberglass roof and a wooden door.

I popped open the door and peered into the dark at my collection of mowers, edger and weedwacker, clippers, bags of grass seed and fertilizers, until I noticed that everything was in worse disarray than usual.

A grass seed bag had been knocked from the shelf and had spilled all over one mower and the room smelled of gasoline.

I reached in and pulled on the handle of the mower and, BOOM, a huge rat skittered out from underneath, went right between my legs and out across the patio. It happened so fast that I didn't shudder until he had disappeared into the grass.

I don't tolerate rats very well, but I steeled myself and went back in to remove all the tools. The mess was terrible, but what was worse was the damage the rat had done to my mowers. The good mower had a lived-in look where the grass bag had been unraveled to make a nest in the chute area. The not-so-good mower had actual tooth marks where the rat had chewed at the plastic engine housing.

I didn't want to deal with the mess without a particle mask on, so I went to the garage to get one, grabbing the wet-vac on the way back. It was worse than I'd thought. The rat had chewed the spark-plug wire almost all the way through on both mowers, the nest in the first mower was so ensconced in the chute and under the engine area that it took me nearly an hour with a coat-hanger and the vacuum to get it cleaned out.

Rat droppings were all over the floor inside, so after vacuuming I took a gallon of bleach and scrubbed all the concrete surfaces.

I don't like killing anything and don't even use Round-Up on the weeds because of my dogs, who sometimes chew on grass in the yard, but I knew I had to get serious with disease-carriers like rats.

Home Depot had the waxy bars of rat poison and I bought a couple of boxes.

I went home and placed them on the shelves as per the instructions and after a week, I went back down and checked the shed to find a successful result.

Under one mower lay a really big dead rat. I picked him up with a shovel and buried him a few feet away from the compost heap.

The dogs will not bother this site because I park my wheelbarrow over it. On my way back to the equipment shed, I saw a blur of movement from the corner of my eye.

A squirrel scampered across the yard and up the cedar tree, where he poised, bouncing on a lower bough.

Lucky for him, the dogs were still inside, and as I turned to leave, I saw him leap through the air and land directly on top of the bird feeder my Dad made for me.

A perfect jump, he must have done this before.

I hollered at him and he jumped down and tore off, but I could see that he had robbed the seed bank in my feeder before since the plexiglass was set askew and the seed was nearly gone. So much for the squirrel-proof pole the feeder is mounted on. (Back to the drawing board, Dad!)

Back at the shed, I replaced the sparkplug wires on both mowers and patched a hole in the grass catcher of the good one, but I didn't know then what else was to go wrong.

Finally getting around to mowing, I had to fill up the gas cans. I loaded them into my van and after topping off the tank, I filled the two five-gallon plastic cans.

I noticed some wetness underneath and on closer inspection found tooth marks on the bottoms of both cans. Unbelievably, the rat had chewed through the gas cans.

The attendant at the station gave me some garbage bags and I was able to contain the leak and get up to Schuck's to pick up some new cans, then home where I transferred the gas.

Later that evening I was just settling in to read the newspaper when I heard a fluttering noise coming from the wood-stove next to me.

A bird was looking at me through the glass doors like a man at a horse track betting window.

I got my camera, opened the house door and then swung the stove doors apart. An Ash-Throated Sparrow I think he was, he zoomed right out like he'd hit the exacta.

It was a photo finish.