Rats are one of the most resilient rodents on this globe. They take care of their orphaned young, and they survive on whatever they can find, and in whatever nests they can make – all over the globe.
Both of my
sisters had had experiences with rats (in Canada and in Uganda), and while I
had seen the odd rat at a distance, I had never had to deal with living with
them –let-alone sleeping with them!
At home in
the village there is a small variety of rat (from my limited knowledge of
rodents, I would have called them mice). There are several problems with having
rats around, but aside from their stealing food, and possibly spreading disease,
if not just urinating on personal belongings (such as children’s car seats
being stored in a hut!), they attract snakes. So, when we had a tribe of rats, numbering in the hundreds,
living close to our hut, and after having one of them drown in our drinking
water (inside our hut – such a horrible sound to wake up to!), we destroyed
their main home and destroyed several nests to get rid of them.
I thought
that that would be the extent to my living with rats, and I was not prepared
for the sleepless night at a friend’s home. The hut was literally infested with
rats! Thank God that our children did not notice them, but Samuel and I did not
sleep for most of the night. We were actually sharing a bunk bed, with Samuel
on top, and me on the bottom with our youngest. I had music playing on my phone
to help drown out the noise of little rustling feet, scrummaging through a bag
of dried corn, climbing up to a nest in the roof, and climbing in and out of a
window –moving the shutters each time. But when I turned on the torch on my
phone and shone it beside my head, it was difficult to go back to sleep,
knowing that just on the other side of a thin mosquito net, the rats were
running up and down our bunk bed frame!