I smell a rat...

by Micah

At the beginning of June, when Alisha and I were preparing for our trip to Ica and Arequipa, Alisha was getting some luggage out of the top compartment of our closet (which is built into the wall in our bedroom). Since only luggage and other things that we don’t use very often were being stored there, we hadn’t opened that top compartment for a while. So we were unpleasantly surprised to discover that everything was covered with mold, serious amounts of mold. Since then, we’ve been keeping both the upper and lower compartments of the closet open let them air out. This piece of information is crucial to the story that follows.

On Tuesday night, Alisha was awoken by a series of loud noises in our room: a box of pens and pencils being knocked over, scratching sounds, and the like. I, a heavy sleeper, didn’t notice a thing, but Alisha simply couldn’t get back to sleep because of the incessant noises. In her sleep-deprived state, she imagined that some large animal had invaded our room and her slumber. After several hours of anxiety, she woke me up, so I started hearing the sounds as well. It honestly sounded like there were multiple rats in our room, which is an unnerving thought at 4:00 am. Alisha spent about 30 minutes panning the room with a flashlight, but we couldn’t catch a glimpse of our little friend. Alisha couldn’t take it anymore, so she decided to go to the living room and try to get some sleep. I stayed in our room trying to locate what I assumed to be a rat. After a while, I heard some plastic bags rustling, and I suddenly remember that we had several plastic bags stored in the top compartment of our closet, which was open. So I jumped out of bed, turned the light on, and stealthily approach the closet. I rustled one of the bags with my hand, and it rustled back, so I knew the rat was in there. I shut the closet doors, turned out the light, and climbed back into bed to listen for more rat sounds, just in case the one I trapped in the closet had brought friends. Fortunately, the only sounds I heard came from the closet’s upper compartment.

We couldn’t deal with the rat right away because we had some work to do Wednesday morning, but when we were finished, we went back to the house. María, a family friend who happens to be an expert rat killer, was there. So the three of us went to our room to exterminate the rat. Well, it wasn’t nearly as simple as we all thought it would be. I’ll spare you the gory details, but you should know that it took 30 minutes, several small wooden boards, a broom, and iron rod, a broken television antenna, and an umbrella (wielded by Alisha, who was screaming and jumping up and down on the bed for the duration of the ordeal) to eliminate this ferocious beast of a rat, who, by the way, measured about seven inches in length (without the tail!) and had a vertical jump of at least four inches. We’re still traumatized, and we don’t know if even time will heal our wounds, but at least we’re sleeping well.