A life on the ocean wave
TWO black, beady eyes glared up at me as I shoved the trawl net to one side. I gazed back, transfixed. Time stopped, whiskers twitched and the rat bolted. ‘Shut the door! Shut the door!’ bellowed skipper Nick Rich, as the rat bounded for the wheelhouse. Once in the bowels of the trawler, there are umpteen nooks and crannies to hide in, together with many vital cables to gnaw. I lumbered after it in my ‘oilies’ and slammed the door just in time.
After a rat hunt that saw the creature shooting back and forth across the deck, it exited through a scupper in the half light of dawn. It must have swum across from Brixham breakwater in the night and
