April 8, 2019 - Pam and I moved to San Augustine, Texas 27 years ago where I became Pastor of Calvary Baptist Church. We lived in the church parsonage for a couple of years and then bought the old Dr. Hicks house located two blocks from the church sanctuary. Our new home was surrounded by pecan trees and the year we moved there, we gathered a bumper crop.
One night Pam, our son Brandon and I shelled pecans until midnight and when we went to bed, Pam quietly sat up in the bed. “I hear a rat on the floor, she whispered …he’s scratching under the bed.” About that time she pulled the cover over her head and hollered, “Doug, he’s getting on the bed!” She then grabbed the cover and slung the rat off the bed. I called Brandon to bring the .22 (that we keep loaded with rat shot) and to hold the flashlight as I fired the gun. When I asked him to pull out the rat, he said, “It’s not a rat!” , and handed me a beautiful little flying squirrel.
Since flying squirrels are nocturnal, we never saw any after that night. As much as we hated shooting it, there was no way we could have known the rat was actually a squirrel. Later, when Pam tearfully told the story to Frances Bradberry, our church pianist, she was surprised when Frances laughed out, “Don’t let it worry you, Honey.”
”That squirrel just shouldn’t have crawled up on that bed!”
