Rats Bats!

                I hope that you are all ready for an extremely embarrassing story because I have one to share. Please sit back in your seats, pop some popcorn and get comfortable. I am a story teller by nature, and this is going to be a great one.          

                This week, my roommate, Samira, had to go to Tegucigalpa to attend some training for school. Due to the fact that neither she nor I wanted me to stay home alone, I packed my things and went to a friend’s house. I stayed there Monday night, Tuesday and Wednesday.  I had a great time there. I played over a hundred games of Spider Solitaire and watched Pirates of the Caribbean. So it was perfect. Wednesday night, it began to rain. Not a little bit of rain either, it was POURING rain. It was dark and stormy when Samira came to pick me up.

                Before we opened the gate to our house she said, “I have to tell you something, when I stopped by the house there was someone in it.”

 My heart rate increased and a million questions raced through my mind.

Then she continued, “It wasn’t someone as much as it was a something.” She paused for effect. Just like I am doing right now……..

                “I saw a rat!” she said.

                I felt a little bit better after she said that. But my heart was still pounding. I am not a fan of rats. I can handle mice, I can handle bugs, but rats are a different story. I cannot handle rats. When we got home, I slowly opened the door and we looked around for a little bit before deciding that the rat was hiding. I went to bed that night and didn’t think much of it. Though I promise you that heard squeaking.

                The next day we didn’t see the rat. The housekeeper looked around the house for it, we moved boxes and there was no sign of it, so I was okay. If I can’t see it or hear it, what harm can it do, am I right? But as the night came, I began to hear the squeaks again. I could hear them in my room, they were so close, but I still couldn’t see it. So I was okay.

                THEN I HEARD IT! Not just the squeaks! I heard it run into a plastic bag, and then I heard it run into my scale on the floor. I had been so sleepy, I was almost asleep, but knowing that there was a rat in my room woke me right up. My heart was pounding, and I got really hot. Every little sound made me sit up in bed. And that is when I knew that I wasn’t going to sleep. Don’t ask me why I couldn’t sleep knowing there was a rat in my room, I knew in my head that it couldn’t get me. But that didn’t change the fact that I was freaking out.

                I have seen The Great Mouse Detective twice in my life. That movie is terrifying. And there is a rat in that movie called O’ Ratigan. He is a despicable character who turns into a deranged rat at the end and begins to chase the main character on a clock tower. That crazed rat image is forever burned into my mind because it was terrifying. I have also seen Lady and the Tramp. Do you know that happens in Lady and the Tramp?! A red eyed rat breaks into the baby’s room and climbs the baby’s crib and it about to chomp on the baby when Lady runs in and rescues it. And you know what else? I have read about Bubonic Plague. I know that was the rats fault.

                So as I am laying there I realize that I am basically living out a Disney movie, only not the ones where the princess gets kissed by the prince, but the ones where a deranged rat gives children nightmares. I start to think, “Why did God send me here, to a place with rats? He should have sent Bear Grylls. Or a cat” and I am laughing in my head because it’s only a rat. Then I decided to put my head phones in and turn on some music so that I just can’t hear it scurrying around my room. I laid in a position so that I couldn’t see the floor beneath me and I turned on my instrumental music. It was about 1:30 am at this point.

                I was starting to fall asleep, when the song changed to the instrumental version of “Don’t Stop Believing” came on. It woke me up. And I changed the song. Then I went through that process about four times. The last time I remember checking the clock, it was 2:45 am. And I decided that if he hadn’t attacked me by then, he probably wasn’t going to. And though I didn’t move, I think I finally fell asleep.

                I woke up the next day at 5:30. I texted Samira and asked her to open my door because I was still too scared to move. She came in and the housekeeper looked around my room with a broom but there was no sign of the rat. All we found was a gecko, and I am not afraid of geckos. They are harmless and they eat mosquitos. The gecko ran up the wall. I got ready and went to school.

                School was awesome! I love the preschool teachers that I will be working with. I think we all connected really well. And while we were at school, the housekeeper was going to look around in my room to see if she could find the rat and where he was hiding.

                She didn’t. I came home and it got dark again and I started to hear it squeaking. Samira and Welsie, the housekeeper came into my room with the broom to find it. I told them it was in the closet and I could hear it squeaking. Samira and I left, just in case it came out. Welsie is brave and she is not afraid of them. While she continued to look, Samira and I sat down in the living room. I heard the squeaking again.

                “That’s it Samira, that is the squeaking I hear all the time!” I told her.

She listened and then she started to laugh.

                “That’s not a rat Char,” she said, “That is the sound that geckos make!”

                “Wait geckos make sounds?” I said again, surprised!

                I had no idea that geckos made sounds! Let alone squeaking sounds! And seriously after all of the documentaries I have watched and all of the nature shows I have seen and the fact that my dad can make like every single animal sound, and I still didn’t know that geckos made a sound. So we got a good laugh about it. It proved how much of a crazy gringa I actually am, so embarrassing!  And I got to share the story of how the rat in my bedroom was actually a gecko!

                That is where the story should have ended, a happy ending…

                But as I was typing this, guess what decided to grace me with its presence… that’s right my friends, the rat.  I just saw the beast run out from behind my closet, sniff and then run back in. I didn’t even have time to scream. Instead I started to whistle, just so he would know that I mean business. This is my land!  I got up out of bed and ran into Samira’s room and yelled,

                “HA! I am not crazy! I am so happy! …..Also, there is a rat in my room.”

                This time it was more than the squeaks, I had actual proof (Which I think there is a lesson about faith that I can work in here. Faith is being certain of what we do not see. I was certain there was a rat. And Now I have seen it). And of course when Welsie checked, she couldn’t find it. But he is in there, I hear the actual rat squeaks (which sound NOTHING like a gecko) and I hear him digging around. So here is where the story ends for now, as we are going to the store to buy a rat trap and some cheese. I will not be sad to see Templeton go (That is what I named him as my name is Charlotte and it only seemed fitting). Had he been more willing to clean my room, or make me a dress or something, I could have probably kept him. But this is not a fairytale, this is indeed a nightmare…  

                Epilogue: We caught the rat in my room and we caught a bonus rat in the kitchen. They were actually really tiny and also adorable. And because the last house had rats, we moved to a new one yesterday (no I am just kidding we were planning to move before). So now I am a home that is rat free, and also there is a Chinese food restaurant outside me window…