I make attempts at living a hygienic lifestyle. I tuck my
hanging mosquito net under my mattress every day to keep out dengue-plagued
mosquitos, I sweep my floor each morning to clear out the night’s worth of dead
cockroaches, and I scrape the mold that keeps growing on my shoes during rainy
season. I try to keep up with my clothes washing as well, yet whenever I look
down at my “professional” wear, it’s a bit embarrassing to notice all the
stains I didn’t scrub out, or had somehow managed to scrub in. .I’ve found
myself questioning, “are socks supposed to bend?” more than once in this
country. Needless to say, I’ve been doing an impeccable job at being a clean,
highly functioning adult, am I right?
….until recently. A few weeks ago, my home was invaded by a
rat. It began chewing through my oatmeal bags and leaving its droppings over my
kitchen utensils. Being a health volunteer in Nicaragua, I’ve learned there are
a large number of diseases that are spread through the consumption of rat scat,
so I was beginning to get concerned. At night, while trying to peacefully drift
off to sleep between the dogfights and the crowing roosters, I could hear it
scurrying, looking for its next meal and toilet amongst my things. It was
making a mockery of me, and I was not going to take it any longer! I armed
myself with a deadly arsenal: bananas, rice, tortillas, and rat venom. I
strategically put piles near its favorite hangouts, such in between my clothes,
or the little hole it was digging out of the side of my wall. Then I waited. At
first, I was discouraged, for when I checked my stockpiles of venom-riddled
tortillas the next day it seemed that the rat was on to me, and wasn’t going to
take the bait. It wasn’t until a few days later, that I began to notice that my
room was starting to get a funny smell. Was it the tortilla/cheese/rice trap
going bad? Or was that the decaying smell of a rat’s defeat? Once again, I
checked my booby-traps, nothing. …Perhaps under the bed? I grabbed my emergency
flashlight that I keep for power-outages, did a quick scan under the bed and
alas! There it was! A rat dead in mid-stride! When I pulled out the bed (along
with my posse of neighborhood children) to expose the rat, and the rotting
smell of victory punched us in the face. I had never felt so accomplished yet
disgusted at the same time. I felt like a responsible dog-owner as I got some
newspaper to clean up the “little present” under my bed, and I quickly dumped
the body in the woods. The smell still lingered, as I think that it had been
decomposing for a couple days now, judging by the body fluids that had been
left on the floor. However, no me importaba (I didn’t care), nothing a little
bit of Chlorox couldn’t fix. Alas, victory! No more droppings beside my food.
No more scratching in the night. No more bites out of the bananas I leave on my
table. Helen: 1! El Raton: 0!!
It's the little things in life that get us through.