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“The Jumbos Bite”: Rick’s Rodent Ranch in Lexington, Oklahoma

Published September 12, 2004

I, Bernie Harberts, did not use generative AI to write or illustrate this article. Spell check and grammar check, yes. AI, no.

“You’ve got different rat sizes,” Rick explains as he gently lifts a young rat onto his lap.

Rick Pariseau holding a feeder rat at Rick's Rodent Ranch in Lexington, Oklahoma, 2004 — Is that a fuzzy or a hopper? Rick Pariseau shows me one of the rats he raises at Rick’s Rodent Ranch.

“You’ve got your fuzzies, hoppers, smalls, mediums, larges.” The rat scrabbles across his leg. “Oh, you’ve got your jumbos too. But they bite.”

Rick got into the feeder rat business with “four rats a friend gave me.” Now he has over 1,200 and he’s been in business only about a year. He even has business cards. They say “Rick’s Rodent Ranch” on them and feature a whole line of blue rats running single file across the top edge.

“After I retired, I had to do something so I decided I’d go into the feeder rat business.” Feeder rats are what snakes eat. “Some people just buy them for pets.”

Rick shows me how the cages are cleaned. How new bedding is put into trays. How the rats are fed and watered. “They eat dog food.”

Rick Pariseau pulling a rat from a cage at Rick's Rodent Ranch in Lexington, Oklahoma, 2004 — Pulling out a rat for me to check out.

Does he have a rat problem? Do they escape? “No, the cat usually catches the ones that get loose.”

I’d met Rick and Taraz Pariseau while riding down the road. They just pulled up in their van and before I knew it I was being showered, laundered, even fed.

The next morning, when it came time to leave, Rick gave me a saddle bag, a pair of spurs, a pile of feed. And best of all, a new bridle.

Woody had stepped on his back in Fort Smith and had broken the head stall. I used baling twine and duct tape to keep it together for the next few hundred miles.

Lo and behold, Rick pulled out a beautifully studded and conchoed head stall. I mean gorgeous, almost over the top for an old Amish plow mule.

“Here, take this,” he said and I gladly accepted. My baling twine bridle was fraying.

I headed out the next morning and not far from Rick’s I ran across the Black Widow VW, the most surreal piece of road art I saw in Oklahoma.

Black widow spider sculpture made from a VW Bug outside Lexington, Oklahoma, 2004 — Don’t look up, Woody and Maggie! The most amazing black widow I’ve ever seen, made out of a VW Bug, outside Lexington, OK.

That evening, I tried to fit the bit from Woody’s old bridle to his new one. But the leather cheek pieces were too stiff and wide to hold the bit. Damn it!

I was feeling droopy so I fired up my Optimus Ranger gasoline stove to make a cup of hot tea. I boiled water, put a tea bag in the pot and as I watched it steep, I knew exactly what I had to do next to fix the bridle.

Thanks Rick and Taraz for patching us up and getting us on our way!

More on the Atlantic to Pacific mule ride.

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