Vermin

I think most of you who know me, know that wherever I have lived I have had my battles with vermin. In Washington DC, they grow as big as cats and they run in packs in the small alleyways behind houses, duplexes and apartment buildings. Once, while studying while seated on my rug, one came strolling out of the wall vent, stopped, looked at me, and kept creeping along the wall, until I started chasing it with a wooden clog and it disappeared into the bathroom. I then shut my mind to the possibility that it escaped down the toilet because that would have brought to life a dreaded urban myth of it coming back out of the toilet while I was seated on it. In NYC, rats have no boundaries as well. I’ve seen them on subway trains and platforms and I’ve even had one run across my foot as I was walking.

Once in a new place, I go into full combat mode. I make a series of heated and strongly worded phone calls to the building management about their schedule for exterminating the filthy creatures and I grab my one size too big yellow rubber gloves and get to cleaning. I clean the whole apartment as well as place white bicarbonate soda along the edge of the whole apartment for roaches, including outside my apt door (very voo doo like, ne?). But I’ve learned, especially in DC, that both roaches and rats actually eat cleaning detergent---it’s like dessert or something. So all that cleaning was for naught. But I still do it. Even when abroad.

When I was living with afamily in Costa Rica as a Peace Corps volunteer, I went into full cleaning mode on the day I moved in and one of my family members just stared at me, and laughed while eating a plate of rice and beans in front of me. Without a shirt, grossly overweight and sweating—dropping grains of riceat my door.Lovely. He laughed because he knew what I didn’t know at the time. His sister would leave her unfinished plates of food under her bed while watching her telenovelas. So the rats would dine in her room and then come into my room to exercise and frolic in my nice clean room, with their teeny, tiny dirty feet--well into the next day. It was the first time I really saw them scale walls, and jump, very, very high, from the floor to my closet, onto my clothes.

I didn’t use poison when I was in Costa Rica. I wanted them to die, not to suffer by burning from the inside out.I only had a shoe, a broom, traps or that awful sticky paper.The Sister refused to get a cat as cats could prevent her from having children. But she had a child. A child she didn’t plan and didn’t know she was pregnant with until the 7th month because she too was grossly overweight and evidently didn’t know she had had sex to conceive her (What? Really?). And she hated the child’s father and most other men walking the planet as evidenced by the scowl and sharp words she gave to every man that crossed her path. Yet, she was scared her chances of getting pregnant would be in danger. Yes, made perfect sense. I left that house with a slight nervous tick as I would be awaken with a start every night as they would jump and scamper around my room with their teeny, tiny dirty feet. (Some rats get really fat, as well as their tails, yet their feet stay so teeny, tiny--that irks me, so I repeat this fact often.)

So, you would think here in Mozambique I would have learned some lessons about these critters. No, not really. I went straight into cleaning mode once we returned to Maputo from the US in July. And finally, at around 2AM, I allowed my boyfriend to go to sleep, secure that we brought no food into the house and the room was clean—so why would any rat want to come in here? Ummm.Umf.

Well, yes, of course they came because they are not really rats they are humans in rat form. Yes, of course…wait, what? So a twist here in Mozambique (and maybe other parts of Africa), is that many animals are actually hungry witches that take on human form so they can eat what they can’t get for themselves or be given as humans during the day. I tell my boyfriend this is nonsense. He tells me I am rejecting African culture. I tell him that I reject that part of African culture. He ends with, “one day you will believe.” I try to get the last word, “No, I will never believe.” “Yes, you will,” he screams as he runs out the door with the last word. (I hate not getting the last word.)

These dirty animals played romp a room all night. Jumping all over the place, and stopping to look at me in my bed to see if I was awake. I didn’t know that they could tell that our eyes were open. I felt safe that I was high up on the bed until B tells me they climb up on the bed if they need to get to one side of the room to the other. “Como?!?! I thought you said they wouldn’t do that.” “No, I said that they wouldn’t bite you if they climb up on the bed.” Biting or no biting, they are on the bed dude that is enough. So we sleep with a mosquito net every night although it is winter and there are no mosquitos and most particularly because rats can’t bite through a sheer mesh net and thus I will be protected under my blue mosquito net force field.

In Zobue, we didn’t have a rat problem as they were eaten by my cat as well by the people in my neighborhood (that is another blog altogether about food). But my cat died while I was away and I can’t think of getting another cat just yet. But here in Mozzie, they have very powerful rat poisoning. Evidently if the poison falls on my skin it will start to bubble up with blisters and cause extreme agony. Perfect—to hell with animal cruelty and possible self-disfigurement. I need to sleep at night; as well as not spend each day re-washing all my personal belongings. The thought of teeny, tiny rat feet impressions on my things gives me the creepy crawlys.

We put the poison on bread and then placed pieces of the bread throughout the room. That night as I layin my bed I could hear them chomping on the bread. Yes, my dirty friends, eat your little rat hearts out. The next day every single piece of bread was eaten. That night I thought we would do the same. But no, my boyfriend asks, “Don’t you know how smart rats are?” “ No,” I answer, “I just know they are dirty.” “No, they got sick or died from the bread—so they, if they didn’t die,or the others,are not going to eat the bread again.” We take leftovers from our dinner and place it into egg carton scraps and mix it with poison. That night their teeny, tiny dirty nails scratched away at those cartons, gormandizing themselves. One week later no more rats and I am sleeping soundly and safely.
I had to travel all the way to Africa to figure out how to definitively get rid of these suckers: I just had to put poison in all the foods I actually eat that way they will never go near that food again. I guess they aresmart--smarter than me anyway.

(I’m still sleeping under my blue force field every night. You never know.)