Field mouse hunting season

(Baonghean) - Autumn touches the memory of my heart with a gentle, familiar cool breeze that still retains the rich taste of alluvial mud mixed with the damp smell of straw left over from the harvest. This season in the countryside, perhaps the children are calling each other to carry hoes to dig for rats in the distant rice fields... Memories suddenly return to the peaceful years of childhood...

Illustration

After the harvest is the time when field mice are at their fattest. In the small mounds, mice live in groups. In our group of children with three peach-shaped hair tufts, everyone is excited to go catch mice. It is not only a "job", but also a very interesting game... In fact, none of my friends like to let me go along, because, apart from standing and cheering everyone to try, I can't do anything useful. I am afraid of mice. In return, my brother is the "leader" of the group, and also the best mouse catcher in the village. Therefore, every afternoon, even though some children always look at me with unfriendly eyes, I still leisurely put on my sandals and run to the field to catch mice. The feeling of excitement from that childhood filled with memories is hard to describe in words.

Hunting field mice involves many stages that require each child to be quick, flexible, and especially to have a reasonable “tactic”. First, my brother cleared the weeds to track down the traces of the mice. He said that he could tell if the mice were big or small by looking at the worn footprints outside the cave entrance. Then, he assigned one child to use a pickaxe to dig the cave entrance wider, then put a bamboo basket firmly in the middle. Next, when my brother found a side cave that connected to the main cave entrance, the young children had already brought back a bucket of water and poured it into it. When they encountered water, the mice would scramble to run out to escape, unaware that a bamboo basket was ready to wait for them at the main entrance. And in the end, they fell into the trap. Every afternoon, when the sunset gradually closes behind the distant blue mountains, some people hold bamboo baskets, some carry iron hoes on their shoulders, and a few others join hands to carry a full cage of mice back home with joy, excitement, and indescribable joy.

When we got home, my brother would divide the fat rats equally among the group members. Holding the “spoils of war” after a hard-working afternoon, everyone had muddy smiles on their faces. While my brother and his friends were excitedly discussing the plan for tomorrow afternoon, I quickly ran behind the house, pulled out a handful of golden straw, and brought it to the corner of the yard for my brother to roast the rats. The straw fire burned brightly, and the black fur of the rats burned again. Waiting for the right moment, my brother used a stick to pick up the rats and peel off the outer skin. As my brother peeled, each piece of soft white rat meat appeared, shimmering with fat. The rat meat was washed, the intestines were removed, chopped into small pieces and marinated with spices to be processed into many different dishes...

On chilly autumn afternoons, in the small kitchen corner, the sound of frying fat sizzling and the smell of rat meat wafting up is fragrant and warm. Rats braised with lemongrass and chili, crispy rats braised with sesame, rats fried with lemon leaves or chopped rats made into lolot leaf sausage, each preparation method has its own unique flavor. Biting into each piece of fragrant, fatty, fatty rat meat, the whole dinner feels so wonderful. My father used to say: "Rat meat is wild rabbit meat!" So, when I was a child, wherever I went, I bragged: "My family gets to eat rice with wild rabbit meat every day". When I grew up and had the opportunity to enjoy rabbit meat, I still think that there is no meat as delicious and irresistible as the rat meat of the fields of my hometown in the old days...

Phan Duc Loc