Just as my landlord promised, I was given (finally) an extra small room to use as my kitchen. This day was long overdue and much anticipated. The week after Thanksgiving I was allowed to move my things into the small room across the compound. Thanks to Kevin for helping me move all of my stuff!
I was so excited about this and was very proud of the way it looked with everything in it.
The next morning, I walked into my new kitchen and noticed some small black dots on my stove. Rat turds, I thought, although I tried to talk myself out of the fact that there had been rats in my kitchen over night. But I kept coming across more evidence that there had been an invasion while I was sleeping. And it was disturbing!
I finished making breakfast for myself and took my food into my bedroom to eat. Later on that day I walked back over to wash dishes. I use three shallow basins for dishwashing; one with soapy water, one with clean water to rinse, and one to set my dishes to dry. I put the basins on the ground and sit on a small stool. As I’m washing the dirty dishes from my morning meal I notice a few rat turds on the table underneath my stove. THEN, I noticed something hanging down, coming from up inside my stove. THEN, IT MOVED!
AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I did the “slow motion, get up and move backwards” maneuver away from the table and out of the kitchen door. I collected myself then gained the courage to take another look. Yes, it was definitely the TAIL OF A RAT!
I didn’t think I was scared of rats, but maybe that’s because I’ve never had an encounter with a rat. Sure we have a few field mice in Kansas, but those are different… you should have seen the TAIL on this thing! YUCK!
I wasn’t really sure what the next step was, all I knew was that I didn’t want to go back in there until the rat was gone! So I called the police. Ok, so I really just walked over to the door of the policeman that lives in my compound and asked if he had a minute. He took a look underneath my stove, confirmed what I already knew, then went and got the one-eyed cat that hangs around my compound. Haha. He and the cat went into my kitchen and he shut the door behind them. There was some scuffling coming from inside. The door opened and out ran the cat, with the rat in its mouth!
I was so excited! I thought I had won the war! But the next morning, I discovered that this was only the beginning…
Over the next few weeks, it was a constant battle; a losing battle at that. I was completely paranoid every single time I opened the door into my kitchen room. I didn’t even want to go in there. I thought about moving my things back into my bedroom where they had been before, but I host a lot of PCVs that live nearby and I liked the extra space I now had. I moved most of my food out of the room, back into my bedroom, and put my dishes in plastic, stackable baskets that were easy to move in and out of my kitchen. I had a pretty good system for keeping the rats out of my food and off of my dishes, but they still invaded every night, and left LOTS of round, black evidence. And I was still paranoid.
I was telling a teacher friend about my problems with the rats. He said he knew a guy that sells live rat traps. I thought it would be worth a try. Turns out, they don’t work very well………at all. So I found a friend with a snapping trap, like the ones you would normally see in the States. But what I didn’t know is that I was dealing with ninja rats! Night after night I set that darn trap, and EVERY time, they would just eat the veggies, crackers, or peanut butter right off of the trap, without setting it off! I was dumbfounded. I didn’t know what to do.
I got very frustrated and stopped adding food to the trap. But I got lucky one morning! I finally caught a rat in the snapping trap! I think it was the dumb one of the bunch because there wasn’t even any food on the trap. I don’t know if he got pushed into it by a friend of his or if he accidentally just stumbled onto the trap without looking, but either way, I got one! I now had two dead rats under my belt, but I knew there had to be more…
A couple more weeks went by without catching any more rats. The first week of January I had to go out of town for 3 weeks. I tried to move everything they could get into out of my kitchen into my safe bedroom. But still, I dreaded the day I would return to see the damage that would be done and the mess that would be left for me to clean up.
Sure enough, after my 3 week absence, it looked like there had been 100 rats in my kitchen every night. The damage done was absolutely unbelievable! They had chewed through entire plastic lids! They got through two plastic baggies and into 4 packets of hot chocolate mix. There was cocoa powder everywhere! The amount of rat poop was disgusting and disturbing.
The family that lives with me in my compound said they had been setting the trap every night and caught FOUR while I was gone!!! This was great news! But FOUR RATS?! Which brought my total to SIX RATS… UGH! That night I set the snapping trap and put some peanut butter in and on the live trap that was still useless thus far.
The next morning, I walked across the compound and slowly opened the door to get a peek in. The first thing I noticed was no rat in the snapping trap. Go figure. BUT! I FINALLY CAUGHT A RAT IN THE LIVE TRAP!!! I could hardly believe my eyes!!! It finally worked! I was so excited! The first thing I did was run back into my bedroom to retrieve my camera, haha. The rat was as big as I expected, and the long, thick tail was just… gross! After the photo shoot I went over to my compound dad and asked what I should do with the nasty little creature. He said we would wait around for the cat. That was fine with me!
That afternoon I went to basketball practice. When I returned, the rat was gone! I asked the compound dad what he did with it, if the cat had finally come around to finish him off. He said “Dumu yellen (there is no cat), karrar (knife), anchuwa (rat), DEAD (and did the ‘slit your throat’ motion, haha!). That works for me! As long as I didn’t have to see it!
I took the time to really get things cleaned up. I bleached everything in the kitchen and swept up a ton of cocoa powder and rat turds. I figured if I got everything cleaned up real well, I would be able to tell if more rats were still coming in.
The next morning, to my greatest surprise, there were no new rat turds, no rat footprints on my stovetop, no new holes in plastic lids! I thought to myself, “Have I finally defeated them?!”
The next few mornings were just as successful. No evidence of any nighttime rat invasions. I’m now going on about 2 weeks of being ‘rat free’ and it feels so good! No more sweeping feces, no more wasted food, no more paranoia, NO MORE RATS!
But I continue to set traps every night, just in case 
