It is actually still the year of the sheep here in China...
But in our house I cannot remember a year with more ants. Ants upon ants. All over our floor, sneaking through the poor quality tile. In and out of everywhere. I found one mound near my cookbooks, another had bored a hole in a wooden marble game we have. Even in the bathroom they roam.
However, maybe mosquitoes are worse. We told the TCC team months before their coming, "in our house and even outside we don't have a lot of mosquitoes." Boy were we wrong. Our kids get bit now almost every time they go outside. This is the first year we have really used repellent here.
Ants and mosquitoes, an expected outcome of living in the subtropics....but the rats?
A year ago now, cats would leave dead rats on our back doorstep. And I don't like cats but I thanked them kindly, because I despise rats. Who doesn't?
This year we have heard them nightly outside our homeschool room window, cheeping cheeping away.
Then. Then. I can barely bring my fingers to type the words....
Our helper discovered a rat in the kids' bathroom toilet. Not dead. Yes, alive and well. I did not have the heart to look. I called the super hero. And he had nothing to work with. I thought he would get it out and kill it. But the rat went back to where it came from...DOWN the toilet. David flushed a few times for good measure, and stuck a long wire down the toilet to make sure it wasn't stuck. We really are convinced that this was a sewer rat that came up possibly from all the rain. Perhaps all the infestation of pests is from this year's weather. We saw no evidence of this rat being in the bathroom or anywhere else....
Then... our friends' helper, preparing their house for their return from the States, called David a bit frantic. Two rats had made a home in their bathroom, chewed through the water hose and everything else...I won't detail what went on to kill those guys. I wasn't there. I went in for the clean-up....well, let's be honest, I went in to hand the cleaning supplies to the one cleaning up. Gross. I did bring her gloves, for which she was very thankful.
All three of these aforementioned creatures were not mere mice, the were big 'ole rats, Templeton-size rats. David said if I had seen the one in our house I would never sit on a toilet again....yes, yes, I am sure. I still hesitate.
I asked aloud to everyone, "Do we need to get a cat?" Tobin promptly said: "NO, cats are sassy" (we had recently watched the movie 'The Incredible Journey'). Bella also disagreed because 'Daddy is allergic'. I thought I should just start feeding the mangy cats I see on my runs around the neighborhood, they seem always on the prowl...
This post is just a little venting, I know it could be way worse, and I am getting wimpy in my old age. Just think, eight years ago when we needed to move apartments, we tried desperately to find housing in nearby villages. I imagine if we had done the village life thing I could be laughing about the ONE rat in my toilet. Perspective, I know I need it.
Either way, thoroughly disgusted here in Asia!
