African Wildlife

On Thursdays, I have class at 12:45 pm, so I typically spend Thursday mornings sleeping late, wandering around my flat groggily, brewing coffee, and browsing headlines on the internet. I’ll usually shower sometime near noon, and then spend an excessive amount of time standing in front of the mirror twisting my mustache into various shapes and parting my beard in odd places. This last Thursday was no different from any before until I walked into my bedroom and opened the top drawer only to find that it had been commandeered during the night by a rat. He’d shredded the inside surface of the wood into hundreds of shavings which he’d managed to work into a large pile in the middle of my boxer shorts which begs the question, why do rats love my underwear so much?

About a month ago after I hulk-smashed a litter of rats, I went looking for a rat trap so as to catch the mother. All the shop owners I visited sought to sell me glue, which I declined to purchase since it would have required that I personally dispatch the captured rat – a task that I did not wish to perform again despite having proved myself so, ehh… capable. I finally inquired about a rat trap at the maghalaq on Street 60, and was assured, yes, they had one. One minute, please, while the shopkeeper rummaged through a pile to find it. He ducked behind the counter and reappeared with a cage. “Isn’t there anything else?” I asked. There was not. Luckily the trap worked, and in a couple of days I caught momma, took a rickshaw to the other side of town, and let her out in a ditch.

Then, as I’ve already told you, another rat began inhabiting my drawer on Thursday. Or two, actually, it seems to’ve been. I’ve spent the last couple of days entrenched in battle against these Rattus Norvegicus (as opposed to the much more terrible Rattus Rattus), but I have finally triumphed.

So, today I have undertaken the cleaning of my drawers and clothes. I purchased a bottle of Dettol — a substance of ambiguous composition which claims to be a disinfectant that is recommended by “doctors” and is approved by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. And, I have put all the boxers in to wash. Jason is determined to find rat poison to feed to the offender, and I’m not entirely against that, although we’ve looked for it in 3 stores now to no avail. Should more rats attempt to take up residence with us, I have decided that I am going to begin a trade in rat pelts. It is winter, after all, and a rat-skin coat is just the thing to keep one warm on the 70°F winter evenings that will soon be upon us.