With cats living outside there's never been so much as the squeak of a mouse around the bags of corn and horse feed.

So, it was a real surprise the other night to come face to face with the biggest, blackest rat. In fact, we've become so used to the nighttime rustlings of hedgehogs in this particular part of the granary that yours truly was bending right down in anticipation of getting a closer glimpse of Mrs Tiggywinkle or one of her equally appealing family.

Not quite as wick as a terrier, but the Lurcher lost all his gangliness and gave chase. As quick as a flash the rodent disappeared. And this is what's interesting. He went down a drain. One that had only just been unblocked the day before…

In fact, its unblocking had seemed to illustrate so well how – never mind men and women – the minds of boys and girls are tuned into completely different wavelengths.

The children had set on to muck a stable out and, as they dug deeper, it seemed to make sense to take out all the old straw and start the winter with a couple of fresh bales. With all the dusty old stuff barrowed out and the floor swept, the hosepipe was brought around from the garden and the walls and floor disinfected and swilled around. The water wasn't running away and we were soon up to our welly tops.

It wasn't long before the daughter was moaning that we'd done enough and asking to get on with "something interesting" like riding the pony.

"No," said her five year-old brother, who had found a stick and was poking out the drainage hole in the far corner of the stable as if his life depended upon it.

"We need to scrape along these lines next," he continued, running the stick down the gaps around
the cobbles that line the floor. "Then we can follow
it down …"

It's no exaggeration to say that he poked about with that stick, alternating with the sweeping brush, for a good two hours after his sister had left the building. In fact, he did the sort of experiment that only boys of a certain age could get away with. Dropping his trousers and aiming his own waterfall down the gully, persuading his father to
lift the manhole cover in the back yard so he could hear the water flowing down.

And there you find me, rustling around like a rat in the dark trying to find an old brick or something to cover up the freshly cleaned-out hole.

Prosperity and wisdom? Who knows, maybe the little chap who cleared this particular rat's access into the outside world will make a fortune in the drainage business…