Friday Five: Rodents

Thursday was, according to the fine folks over at National Geographic, Rat Catcher’s Day. It’s a day for celebrating the Pied Piper myth, but if you have a local vermin catcher you want to belatedly show some love to, it would probably be appreciated. Anyway, since the whole “luring children to their deaths” thing is a little macabre even for a Friday Five, today we’ll be focusing mostly on the rat part of the myth. Enjoy the following five songs about those little critters.

• 5. “Mice on the Stove” – Steve Smith, Chris Sanders & Hard Road

  Rats, mice…they are both gross crawly rodents you don’t want in your house. This jazz-tinged instrumental, though, can stick around. Steve Smith’s delicately picked mandolin replicates the pitter patter of teeny mouse footsteps, and he and Sanders are expertly backed by the none-too-shabby Hard Road (Bill Evans, Aaron McCloskey, Megan Lynch, and Bill Amatneek).

• 4. “The Second Mouse” – Tim O’Brien & Darrell Scott

  Four and a half minutes of picking and kazooing followed by ten seconds of advice: “It’s the early bird that catches the worm/But it’s the second mouse that gets the cheese.” See, sometimes procrastination is a good thing—Tim and Darrell wouldn’t steer you wrong.

• 3. “Ben” – Robbie Fulks

  This is perhaps the saddest song about the friendship between a young boy and a murderous rat ever written. On his album of Michael Jackson songs, Happy, Fulks takes “Ben,” the theme song from the 1972 movie of the same name, and turns it into a country weeper with some heartrending pedal steel.

• 2. “I Smell a Rat” – Patty Griffin

  Griffin’s take on this blues song comes from her newest album, Downtown Church. I think my favorite version was recorded by Big Mama Thornton, but Griffin’s is damn good, too.

• 1. “Intoxicated Rat” – The Dixon Brothers

  Piedmont millworkers Dorsey and Howard Dixon recorded this song (penned by Dorsey, who also wrote “I Didn’t Hear Anybody Pray,” aka “Wreck on the Highway”) in the mid-’30s. Turns out that, much like humans, rats like to run their mouths when they get liquored up, too. Wackiness ensues. “Intoxicated Rat” has also been recorded by Doc Watson and Red Sovine.