Three Tales of Woe

Tale 1.
Late Friday night my sleep was interrupted; I was deep in a REM cycle when I felt a pull on my hair and claws on my shoulder. I let loose a piercing scream and jumped onto Matt. A pack rat was in the bed, he had navigated under our mosquito net, jumped up and finished the last leg by climbing my hair, me an unknowing Rapunzel. After I landed on his legs, Matt risked "cardiac arrest" as a result of the scream. His heart was still racing as we searched for the intruder, who was finally located taunting us from the top of our bookshelf. Matt was not sure which was worse, having a rat in the bed or my reaction to the rat in the bed.

Tale 2.
Cockroaches continue to be my nemeses of the insect world, although I have developed a reluctant tolerance to their presence. My rule is that if I don't see them hanging around I can pretend they don't exist. Except that sometimes I do see them and this is where we run into problems. While cooking dinner the other night a trio of those who don't exist ran out from under our flour container. Two were nothing worth writing about, but the third was a giant, his antennas waved at me in an arrogant and infuriating manner. He refused to disappear and I called for reinforcement (ie Matt), who arrived, saw the bastard, grabbed a fork and bam squished him dead right there on the counter top. Shocking, yes. But also incredibly gratifying in a weird, twisted Peace Corps kind of way.

Tale 3.
Matt was in the kitchen supposedly cooking, when I heard a loud clanging and some choice swear words. "Hon" I called "what's going on in there?". "The rat knocked over the beans" Matt yells back. The reply was somewhat suspicious as I had seen the rat the night before, and while he may have been a gladiator among jungle rats I doubted he had the force to knock a cast iron pot full of beans off the stove. I walked into the kitchen to find Matt, who was slightly out of breath and holding our broom stick like a weapon. He stood over the pot and a dark mess of spilled dinner. "The rat knocked the beans over?" I asked. "Well, I knocked them over" he said "but it was his fault". Just then the rat racing out from under the stove straight towards the doorway where I happened to be standing. I yelped and we (the rat and I) both ran into the living room, Matt came rushing behind us with the broom.

I called out a play by play on the rats movements while Matt worked up a sweat racing around the room attempting to whack the rat, but whacking the tiles instead. Now this was no ordinary rat, this rat had skills. My calls went something like this: "he's on the back chair leg, he's on the chair, HE's on the table, HE IS RUNNING STRAIGHT TOWARDS YOU". At one point I jumped on the couch to get of the rat's path, guess who also jumped on the couch. "MATTTTT, he's on the couch, he's after me, Matt get him, GET HIM". Alas, the rat proved too capable an opponent, too agile and cunning. Matt claims he hit him once or twice, but this is also the man who said the rat knocked over the beans.