By Christy
On our first night when we arrived here to Empowering Lives in Kenya, Samuel warned us that we might hear a rat on our roof, which they’d become aware of. We laughed, and said that it would make us feel right at home, because in December just 2 weeks before we left our house, a rat family had taken refuge from the rain in our attic, and we could hear it at night above our ceiling. We had hundreds of things to do before our departure, and had to add to the list, trap the rat.
Well, lo and behold, on the 2nd morning after settling here in Kenya, I found a hole in my cloth purse on the bottom shelf of the nightstand next to our bed, and lots of nibbles through the ziplock bag that held our coveted Cliff bar snacks. No, not the Cliff bars…we were holding on to the last few of our supply from home, like gold. Looks like we had a visitor! The kids heard me saying out loud to myself, “Oh, yeah, Samuel did warn us that we might hear rats on the roof.” Trevor, in a rare “glass-is-half-full” moment, shot back cheerfully, “Well, at least that’s not true!” Nope, we hadn’t heard any rats on the roof. :) Hmmm….looks like we’re gonna have to make sure everything is completely sealed up here.
The next morning, while I was putting in my eye drops, I noticed rat droppings on the shelves in our bedroom where I had some toiletries, and I saw a few more nibbles in another ziplock. Looks like our visitor was back! Barry discovered some rat traps in a storage area behind our bed, so he set one in the storage space, to see if we might catch the little bandit.
The very next day, Barry walked in from the storage area with the rat trap in hand, and a victim.
Our night thief had been caught!! Yayy! Let’s hope he didn’t have any brothers.
Well, it turns out that he did.
The following day, I noticed rat droppings that hadn’t been there before in the bottom drawer of the wicker dresser near our bed. There were a few nibbles in one of the ziplock bags, but there were no more snacks in these bags, only first aid supplies, sunscreen…and Friendship Bracelets. [we hadn’t intended to make friends with whiskers and long tails!]
I chuckled when I chose this quote as our “Quote of the Day” that evening: Shayla calling across the house, “Mom, where should I put the apples so the rats won’t get ‘em?” She said it like such an every day question, like asking where I put the hand soap, or if we had more toothpaste. “TIA”, I smiled to myself (like they said in Uganda…“This is Africa”).
After discovering we’d had a new dresser drawer visit, we realized that our early “trapping victory” was not the end of our visitors! And yes, he showed up again. I had cleared the rat droppings from the bottom dresser drawer, but the next morning, they were there again! Man, this guy is sneaky! Just a few feet away from my bed each night, and I never heard a thing!
So, we decided to name our little critter friend, since it seemed like he might be around for awhile.
We chose Waldo, since it had become a sort of game for us to find where Waldo had been, kind of like the children’s book where the object is to find Waldo (the guy with the red striped shirt) in a crowded scene page after page. Instead, we looked for little clues day by day to see if he had shown up again on our scene. And he had. For 3 nights in a row now, he had visited the bottom drawer by our bed. Waldo was bound and determined to get a Friendship bracelet, I guess. After 3 nights in a row, we decided to put a large trap with peanut butter, right in the drawer. You’re going down, Waldo!
We opened the drawer with anticipation the next morning. Waldo wins again! We thought the peanut butter would entice him and that we’d find him in the trap, but not so! Waldo had managed to steal the peanut butter chunk right off the trap like it was “take-out” food and enjoy it in the comfort of his own living room. OK, now we were determined to outwit Waldo! Since he’d managed to walk off with our chunk of peanut butter seemingly unscathed, this time Barry put a very thin layer of peanut butter on the trap before we went to bed.
Wednesday morning came, and we again opened the drawer with anticipation. That sneaky little…rat! There was new rat scat in the bottom of the drawer, so we knew he had been there, and he had managed to LICK the thin layer of peanut butter off, and stroll on his merry way (snickering at us the whole way home, I imagined).
OK, that’s IT!…On Wednesday night, Barry “turned it up a notch.” This time, he put a layer of peanut butter, and then covered most of it with a strip of masking tape. (Barry, my little inventor, was enjoying this challenge). Surely, Waldo would be tempted to “pry” his way to tonight’s treat, bringing about his own demise. We went to bed confident we would be awakened in the night by the “SNAP” of the trap. Losing a little sleep would be a small price to pay to finally outwit this conniving little varmint.
When my 5:30am alarm went off, I couldn’t believe it. Waldo had managed to outsmart us again.! No victory trap sounds in the night. I proceeded to the couch for my relished morning time of journaling and prayer before starting the day. About a half hour later, Barry comes walking in from the bedroom, donning the rat trap with a furry gray critter in it.
He had fallen for the “Taped Temptation Trap Trick” after all, and we just hadn’t heard the trap go off. Poor little guy (he was much smaller than his hefty uncle we caught first—kind of cute, even). We said our farewells and put him outside, and an army of the local “Mega Ants” had a feast. [I was going to include a photo of the ant parade and “nature in action”, but Shayla convinced me it was over sharing. Come to think of it, this whole blog is probably over sharing!]. All part of the “circle of life” in our little corner of the world here in Africa.
Well, that should be the end of our nightly “cat and mouse” game.
Unless Waldo has brothers!!
FAREWELL,
WALDO!
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