Shooting Rats

"It's the light they believe kills"....-David Bottoms

After several times of reading Shooting Rats at the Bibb County Dump, I've gotten a sense of what the poem is sort of tryin to say. The men in the poem are all drunk and trying to have a good time. The men decide to load up n go to the dump for some target practice on the rats. Soon after, they'll drink some more and probably return to shoot and drink again. So the quote "We drink and load again, let them crawl for all they're worth into the darkness we're headed for," really fits with the idea that these rats are only good for shooting and drinking. The darkness the rats are headed for signifies death, and the darkness the men are headed for signifies the drinking and shooting. Drinking is considered a bad thing by some people, so thats why I believe the poet David Bottoms says that the men are headed for darkness as well as the rats.
The quote above "It's the light they believe kills," explains how the rats feel in the poem. The rats are blinded by the light that the drunk men shine on them. The rats are stuck in place when the light shines on them. They cannot see the men who shoot them, so they just believe that the light is what kills them. Also if it weren't for the light, then the rats could scurry away into the rubbish. So in a sense, it is the light that kills them.