Rats!

I have been living in a mudhut for the past month. The roof is made of grass, but the ceiling is a plastic tarp used to keep bats out and used as extra protection from the rain. When moving into the huts, we had been warned to make sure everything was locked up in containers because of rats. These rats were said to be on the prowl.  They would crawl across the ceiling and come into the huts, chewing through bottles of shampoo, lotion, or anything they could get their teeth on.

The first few nights, we had no rat problems. But then, one night while in the storage hut, I saw a rat crawl down and back up the side of the wall like Spiderman. This gave me the heebie-jeebies. After observing this, I began to be awakened by the scurrying of feet across the tarp. Countless times, I would lie in bed listening to the scurrying, fearing that the rat would fall out of the ceiling onto me.  I reasoned that this was an irrational fear because the rat just wanted food or something to chew on. Also, it was probably more afraid of me than I was of it. 

I then realized that there was a hole in the tarp from a rope extending from the roof, which was used as a clothes hanger. The rat was crawling down the rope into the hut. I cannot even count how many times I woke up because of the rat knocking things over. I would quickly flip on my headlamp to see him scamper up the rope back into the ceiling. After a many nights of being woken multiple times, I began to sleep with earplugs.

Since it was dry season and mosquitoes were rare, I was sleeping without a mosquito net. 

Then it happened.

One night, I was awakened because I felt something on my side. I sat up rapidly, flipped on my light to see the rat jump off the bed and scurry up the rope into the ceiling. BLAH! BLEH! EW! ICK! GROSS! I immediately put up my mosquito net (to keep the rats out, not the mosquitoes). 

Let’s just say, I didn’t get much sleep that night. I did however spend a good amount of time plotting the demise of the rat, and I also named him. His name is Mr. Peebody. In my mind, I cooked up many creative plans of how to get rid of him. Luckily, it was an easy fix as I was able to patch the hole in the tarp with some screen. I'm happy to report that Mr. Peebody hasn’t ventured down since that fretful night. 

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