rats

I have already told some of you about the rats which dog my life in Liinu's house. But now I must vent!
Firstly, there is the one which lurks in the grocery cupboard and ran up my arm and down my side and slithered its tail over my foot on our first night in residence. That one still scuttles in there and I now give the cupboard a good kick whenever I go near it just in case. He remains there and terrified me by not running very far last time and letting his disgusting long tail hang down behind the shelf where the tea lives (and as you know, tea is my elixir of life, so I must face the beast often!)
Then there is another (or the same very busy one?) who hangs about behind the loo (which is fortunately raised on a little platform; the only reason I can still face it on dark nights), and dashes over one's foot as one wanders in for a late night wee. I think he chews the loo brush - retch-worthy stuff...
And then there is the one which makes off with Eddie's dummies. I wondered where they were disappearing to and then found one on the beam which runs behind our bed, chewed all around the top with little rodent teeth (sharp ones!) - rats love silicone apparently. (I know this because only once in my more youthful life did I owne a snorkel and mask, which I still revealingly up until that time called "goggles" (big no-no!), and used them once in Madagascar and only to find them a year later chewed to ribbons by a rodent in our storeroom at home.) I wake at night in a sweat thinking about those times when I might have inadvertently picked up the dummy from the floor and popped it into Ed's mouth - could it have been gnawed upon and been covered in rat spit?? What horrific germs could Eddie have snuffled in???
And finally, (but not finally enough as it still lurks), there is the one which managed to insert itself under our mosquito net in the darkest hours of the night and tickle my shoulder. With what? and why? are the questions which haunt me. Was it attempting a taste and about to take a chunk of my flesh out with its next bite? Or was it just tapping me to see if I was asleep enough to start some nefarious pursuit only known to rats. (As an aside, Yoliswa told me once that in the townships in South Africa, the mice and rats get into people's beds at night and actually chew off the hard skin on the heels. One wakes in the morning to find one's feet nibbled raw! The story has remained in my mind and looms up on dark nights such as the one described.).)
I leaped up when I felt it and lunged blindly about the bed screeching to Bush to get rid of it, but he lay there like a sodding corpse and harrumphed uselessly every time I yelled at him to do something. I shone my torch under the bed and there it was looking at me out of its horrible shiny poppy little eyes. Foul thing! Then it horrified me more by starting a mad rush around the perimeter of the net trying to escape while I howled in terror. I eventually managed to lift the net with my foot at one end of the bed and bang away at the other end and it scuttled off at last. Fortunately the children didn't wake up and nor did Bush - so I then lay there like a gasping bloody fish unable to discuss the ordeal and thus deal with it (as women must in order to get closure!) and unable to sleep for many more hours.
It's a hard life out here in paradise, babes!