Goblin hustled forward, then aft, to the men on the rat guards.

They have rat guards to keep vermin from nibbling laundry or hoses.

As they climb what appear to be the hawsers of a ship, the rats find their path blocked by conical rat guards.

Nipwort and Frogbit, the two rat guards who had been left in charge of the corsair, prodded him with their spears.

In 1971, residents set fire to piles of garbage to protest state budget cuts, and an antipoverty group invited state lawmakers to see the "rat guards" who kept watch at night to protect sleeping children from rodents.

At the far end were the engines and a cluster of detachable fuel tanks, hidden from sight by the broad plate of the radiation shield which ringed the central tube like the rat guard on the mooring line of an ocean-going freighter.