The carnage unfolded in the silence of great concentration, other than the swoosh and thud of bats swinging and connecting with dirt and rodent. There were dozens of rodent casualties strewn across the battlefield. Then there was a single cry of pain as one of the boys hit himself in the foot.

His shouts and cries of pain broke the fevered spell. Snapped out of our collective blood trance, we stood there and stared at our handiwork in disbelief, shaking a little as the steady sea breeze ruffled dead rodent hair. One boy clutched his mouth and ran off toward the cliff.

I felt an overwhelming surfeit of emotions: debauched disgust, pride, vengeance achieved, sorrow, fear of my own and my friend's capacity for lethal violence. Viewing the rodent corpses around me, I had a sudden vision of my burgeoning family of pet white rats jogging peaceably on their wheels, nibbling cutely on sunflower seeds held between little paws.

But I banished the vision - this was different: these were dangerous pests wreaking devastation on our field, causing grievous injury to my peers. They had to be eradicated, it was us against them, and besides we were told to do it by an adult. I dropped my bat and brushed some gopher remnants from my pants.

After attending to the bruised psyche and foot of the injured player, our coach, clearly taken aback by the fury he had unleashed, quietly congratulated us and also advised us not to tell our mothers, whose delicate sensibilities might be offended by our work. This was between us guys.

Word got out of course - 9 year-old boys keep their mouths shut about something like this? There was a stern dictate from the league that such forms of pest eradication would not be tolerated in the future, but this was a different time and place. The coach was well thought of, his son HAD broken his wrist, and the gophers had to go. There was no disciplinary action, but that doesn't mean there were no consequences.

For years I had recurring nightmares of giant, bucktoothed avengers chasing me over endless fields pitted with gopher holes the size of bomb craters. I had to get rid of my white rats - I just couldn't look at them any more. And I have felt the guilty pleasure of succumbing to the flush of blood lust more than once since that day, a feeling I had never previously experienced. Most seriously, as a young adult I was attacked silently by a small dog from behind when jogging, and I lost all control over myself until I had kicked it to death. I am still not over that horror.

Be careful what you unleash: some genies can never be put back in their bottles.