The kitchen rats.

I know of the kitchen rats.  I suspect them of foul deeds.  I know it is my fault.  About three weeks ago I dropped my less than ordinary mouse Blackscar off at the Tibar dump.  A week later the rats arrived.  I worry that Blackscar was captured and tortured; he thinks he is more of a hero than he is.  I worry that he told them of the fat giant and his nightly plate of crusts. I worry he drew them a map in hopes of clemency and then met a horrible fate.  I have no happy endings at this time of night. 

Two weeks ago, in the middle of the night, I heard something foraging through the kitchen, the last time this happened it was a buffalo.  It got in because I had left the door open after a later night pee.  You want to talk about something you do not want to find in your kitchen at night.  Fortunately the big thing took one look at me and walked away.  I thought this might be that same random bison, so I picked up my flashlight and went to go take a look.  I opened my door and shined a light out.  I hit a rat.  Instead of running the animal reared up and showed me his teeth.  Other things were moving in the darkness behind him.  I slammed my door.  Later that night I heard scratching.

I began to clean out my room the next day.  Sweeping out the underside of my bed and getting rid of anything a rat might find tasty.  I had been a little lax and it took me three trash bags.  Trash is a problem in my home because everything I throw away the urchins go through and plays with.  And that can be embarrassing because a stack of curriculum exercises I had bagged were accidently released into the wind and blew down the street.  The Timorese do not mind this sort of litter but my friends at the clinic, and Sarah Prima do.  So I had to go and pick up as much as I could.  Now I smuggle out trash pretending it is something I am taking with me to work.  Three bags would take some time though.  I would do it one per day.

The rats continued to plague our kitchen every couple of nights.  It was muddy outside and I could see tracks in a line leading up to the house.  It seemed to me there were a lot of them.  I did not want to bother my family because things had been so peaceful lately.

Then, last night they got into my room.  They came over the eves.  I heard some scrabbling in the kitchen and then on my walls.  I pulled out my flashlight and there they were.  They crawled down the walls finding tiny rat handholds in the cracked cement and cinder block and began to tear around the floor.  They ran in lines, they danced and capered and leapt.  Whenever I hit one with my light he would either scurry away or rear up and bear his teeth.  There were too many for me to get a good count, seven at least.  One of them got caught up in my mosquito net thrashing and grunting and then another found the trick of it and began to climb.  Soon there were  rats climbing, chasing each other up the outside of the net.  I used the butt of my flashlight to club them off but they would only become entangled and begin to gnaw through.  They had no fear of me, or could not see me; until I lit a lighter and then a candle.  The whole of the room was bathed in an eerie glow.  The rats stopped and stared. I shook my mosquito net and the entangled rat fell heavily to the ground. Then they ran back up the walls disappearing into the eves of the house.

Today I asked my host family if I could bring home some poison.  Why?, they wanted to know.  Because I thought I might have maybe seen a rat.  For the rest of the morning I got to hear about how dirty I was and how I had attracted rats into the house.  But I got an agreement.  If I bought it myself and only put it in my room, and I was less dirty, yes I could get some rat poison.