The Magically-Disappearing, Mortally Wounded Rat

This tale begins as on a night not unlike our other nights in our little house of horrors: beans and rice for dinner, locking down of the house, hunting and destroying rogue mosquitos, etc. But this night had a nice “surprise” in store for us. Robyn asked me to go get another bed sheet from the closet in other room, so I got up, unlocked our door, kicked aside the clothing which serves as our “crack under the door mosquito barricade”, walked down the hall and opened the door to the other bedroom. Now, in our house, we have only two light bulbs for three bedrooms and the kitchen so the other bedroom was really dark. The only light piercing the murky blackness was the hallway light over my shoulder. Upon opening the door, I immediately noticed that one window was wide open and there were several dark streaks on the wall under the window frame. I froze. My first thoughts were that these streaks were some kind of worm or insect invading our house. So I shuffled back to our room and snatched my headlamp so I could get a better look at the mysterious substance/markings. As I got about three feet from the wall, I saw that a medium sized hole had been gnawed through our two screens, and the unknown substance on the wall was blood. Holy shit!! I stumble backwards out of the room. I slam and lock the door (like rats can unlock doors). I tell Robyn the situation and she reacts with a, “Well, that is kind of scary, but at this point not that shocking” look on her face. So we pass the next 4 hours trying to focus on the bright side- how much everybody back at home was going to love this story. Luckily, we made it through the night with no further rat incidents. We did, unfortunately, have to sleep with our bedroom windows closed making it extra hot.

Morning dawns anew…with courage (Sorry, I’ve been reading too much J.R.R. Tolkein). Around 8 AM the next morning, I roll out of bed to let our housekeeper into the house. I am dressed in nothing but shorts and sporting a wicked case of bed head. A true sight to behold! I say to her, “Karibu” (Welcome) and, “Asabuhi” (Morning), she enters the house. As she is putting her stuff down in the hallway, I go grab a broom and a large knife from the kitchen. I jog out into the hallway and shove the broom into her hands and start adamantly pointing at the door to the other bedroom with an eight-inch knife in my hand. To make this whole moment even more surreal, you must understand that Mama speaks little English, and I speak very little Swahili. This poor little old Tanzanian woman has a look of absolute bewilderment on her face as she is wondering why we are getting ready to attack a harmless door. Next, I unlock the door and shove it open. I enter first, slowly. Mama, with the broom is watching my back. I don’t see any rats, dead or alive, on the floor, so I step aside and point adamantly at her the bloodied wall and hole in the screen. She, then realizing why we are armed for combat, just steps past me nonchalantly with an “ahhh” and starts shoving the broom under the bed! I mean, this rat may be rabid and mortally wounded and having Mama flushing it at my 85% naked body was not in my morning plans. Mama behaved as if this situation is a everyday thing. Though for all I know (and pray isn’t), bloody rats chewing through screens are a normal occurrence around here.

Well, Mama and I finish searching the room and, GLADLY, find no rat. With the all clear given, I investigate the bloodstains on the wall more closely. Through forensics learned by watching reruns of CSI, I was able to recreate the bloody rat’s movement about the room. It seems that the rat chewed through the screens, bleeding on the wall under the screen. It then climbed up the curtains (blood on the curtains), then ambled across the curtain rod (blood on curtain rod and wall), jumped over to the air conditioner (blood), walked across the unit, and then jumped over to the paneling on the wall over the bed (more blood). After this most epic of leaps, the blood trails stops abruptly. But alas, no body was found. This fact was slightly disturbing. Was the rat bleeding its way into or out of the room? Looks like we’ll never know. And here we thought mosquitos were our biggest foe. So who’s coming to visit? We have two open rooms….