RATS!!

After two weeks away from my site for vacation and training, I returned to my village in mid-January. While I was very glad to be back and see everyone in my wonderful new community, I was not happy to face the rats that have incessantly infested my house. The problem is that the rats are inevitable, because I live in a much more rural area now, and my house is made out of wood with lots of spaces between the walls, floorboards and roof. Additionally before I moved in, the house had been used to store sacks of rice which the rats had gotten into and basically made a home for themselves. So they were already used to living there. Before I left my new house for Tana I knew the rats were going to destroy everything if I left belongings like my books and clothes out, so I packed up everything in boxes again and stored half of it in my neighbor’s house. The other half I stored in my rat-proof, metal trunks.

Not surprisingly, there was rat poop everywhere when I got back—all over the tables, bookshelves, floor, rafters and on top of my mosquito net that was still hanging up. Luckily the only thing they had chewed through was the cord extending from my radio antennae up to the roof. After I cleaned up everything and moved all my stuff back into my house, it felt like home again. Pretty soon all the neighborhood kids came over and we spent several hours playing with the new games and coloring books that I had picked up from care packages I received while in Tana. Thanks, family and friends for sending great packages!

That night, the rats were noisy, scurrying back and forth across the tin roof and along the rafters and tables. When I woke up the next morning, I was dismayed to see that they had chewed holes all over the top of my mosquito net while I was sleeping in it during the night! That was the last straw. I could deal with sweeping up the rat droppings every morning, but now that my bet net was destroyed, I had to take revenge. Luckily I had an extra bed net that I received during the insecticide treated net distribution campaign that we had during the month of November. I switched the net out and went to talk to the doctor about how I might deal with my rat problem.

I had already tried poison, which obviously hadn’t worked. I ended up buying a large mouse trap and the doctor gave me one of his to borrow as well. Then I bought some dried, salted fish as bait and we set up the traps in the corners of my house. The first night I didn’t catch anything! I was so surprised because the dried fish I bought had a really strong, salty smell to it. I though for sure they would go for it. The second night I reset the traps so they were a little more sensitive and would close faster. To my delight, I heard a loud squeak and a snap during the middle of the night. When I woke up in the morning and checked the traps, one of them had caught a big, fat rat. Hah! But also gross. I wasn’t sure what to do with the carcass, so I started to dig a grave for it in my small yard outside my house. My neighbor saw what I was doing and came over. She just laughed when she found out I was going to bury the rat. She took the trap from my house and threw the rat out in the woods nearby. I suppose that’s a more practical approach. Some dog or cat or something will probably be happy to find it.

Unfortunately I’ve only caught one more rat since that one. I really want to get a cat, but haven’t found one yet. I’ve tried several different poisons and even mixed them with real food, but the rats don’t really seem to fall for that one. I’d really like to get a cat, but haven’t found one yet. At least there’s the occasional kitty that roams through my yard from some of the neighbor’s houses. I’m hoping that they’ve been catching some of the rats around my house for me too.

While I was cleaning my house the other day, though, I discovered part of the problem. The rats had made a nest in one of the corner’s of my house where there is a space between two of the wood planks on the wall. I stuck a pen in the crack to get the nest out and heard scurrying up the wall, which made me shudder. At least I was able to get rid of the nest, though. I just hope there aren’t more that I don’t know about.

That same day, I was planning to do laundry, so I had set my basin with my clothes in it out on the porch. Two of the neighborhood kids were on the porch playing with my picture books. I had just headed out onto the porch and was putting more clothes in the basin, when a humungous rat jumped out of the pile of clothes, scurried over my hands, out of the basin, across the yard and into the neighboring house. It was huge by no exaggeration. I yelled out a very loud expletive (very grateful for the fact that no one around me knows English), much to the surprise of the kids playing on my porch. I of course had to explain to them what happened, at which point they proceeded to run around to all the neighbors, pronouncing that there was a rat in my wash basin. That was quite the exciting event for the day.

A few evenings later I caught another rat in one of the traps I had set, but it unfortunately didn’t die right away, so there was a terrible, incessant squeaking coming from the corner of my house. I couldn’t sleep through that, so I had to get up and smack the thing with my broom several times before it shut up. Then I swept it outside on the porch for good measure and decided I’d deal with it in the morning. In my half-asleep state, I didn’t think about the fact that something might run off with the trap during the night if it was outside the house. Sure enough when I went outside in the morning, the rat along with the trap was gone. One of the dogs or cats that pass through the yard occasionally must have made off with it. I guess I’ll have to buy another rat trap to replace the one the doctor had lent me.

Unfortunately there are still rats scurrying around my house at night, even though I have killed two adults and a baby and have gotten rid of the nest in my house. At least they haven’t destroyed my other mosquito net. They haven’t really gotten into any of my food either, because I keep everything in plastic containers or in my metal trunk. The one exception is they made of with a whole banana that I left on the table one day by accident. There was no trace of it…the whole thing gone! I just hope none of the other stories I’ve heard from other volunteers happens to me, though. One person woke up with a rat chewing on his hair and another had a rat that bit his leg while he was sleeping. On the bright side, it does seem a little quieter at night than when I first moved in, and I don’t find quite as much rat poop around as I did before. I’m trying hard to believe that there really are less rats around now than there were before.