The rat and I

"How did you sleep last night?" It was Vanessa, the Canadian woman that I had been climbing with the last couple of days.
"Terribly!" I replied with a chuckle. "I'm going to have to move out of that bungalow."
"Why?" The obvious question from Jodi, the other Canadian.
'The rat," I said quickly, "the rat won." They understood.

Three nights ago I woke up because I heard some rustling. There are a lot of noises in my bungalow and I thought it was just some random creature and promtply fell back asleep. The rustling returned. From its tone I could tell it was some kind of plastic bag. But there was something else. Still, it was late (or early) and I wanted to sleep more than I wanted to know what was going on. It wasn't happening right next to me and so I didn't care enough. But then it woke me up again and then I had to know. What the hell was going on?

I flicked on my headlamp and shone ites brilliant white-blue beam around the inside of the bungalow. Near the 'door' to the bathroom I saw my toilet paper laying on the floor. I had left it about 2 meters away from the door when I went to bed. I heard the rustling again and watch somewhat astounded as the string of paper was being pulled into a hole in the wall! WTF?! I got up and shone the light into the crack and staring back at me with beady yellow eyes and pale twitching whiskars was a rat. The rat. It looked at me and then began pulling on the TP again. It had convienently left the role outside of his hole and was unrolling it as he pulled. What a brilliant little creature. But wait, that's my TP and he cant have it. So I ripped off the last sheet, threw the role up high where he couldn't get it and went back to bed. I thought that would stop him.

The next night I was again awoken by more rummaging. This time I knew what was going on. I heard the rat tousling through my bag of chalk bricks. TP, I imagine, makes for a good nest. But what does it want with my chalk? Did he think he was going to redpoint a 5.14 climb with chalk? Undoubtedly the rat is a much better climber than I and would definately think using chalk was cheating. At 2AM I couldn't be bothered with trying to figure out what the deal was. I found my small Wilderness medicine review pamphlet and tossed it in the general direction. I heard scampering and felt like I had won the battle for the night. Ha!

About an hour later I woke up to a horendous smell. I grew up on a farm and know what small farms smell like. I even grew up in aroom that had a lot of mice in the walls and let me tell you that a dead one stinks for a long time. But I wasn't prepared for this! I tossed and turned and finally went back to sleep. But then it happened again. I thought it was my pillow molding in the humid environment for a bit. But that wasn't it either. I finally realized what was happening. That rat. The rat. Was peeing on me! Yes, you heard it. It pissed on me from the ceiling. No joke.

So I learned my lesson. Do not throw things at the rat. It will get mad. I felt like we had reached an understanding, the rat and I. I felt like I could still live there and we could have some kind of balance. Maybe I would leave it some TP everynight as an offering of peace. Maybe leave my garbage a little more accesible. But then I forgot about that when I work up to more scratching and rustling. I located the spot in the wall and banged on it with my shoe a couple times. A blissfull sleep.

After my peaceful night of sleep last night, I woke up and felt like showering. I usually shower in the evening, but had stayed up late playing cribbage with some friends. There's about 2 hours around dusk where its impossible to take your clothes off because of the numbers of mosies around. Anyways, I got up, went in to the bathroom and turned on the water. I looked around for my soap. Where was it? The bathroom is quite small and it was no where to be found. I started getting worried. I looked for another minute but I knew that hope was lost. The rat ate it. He clearly knew how to get me. Maybe he felt that the peeing episode was a little harsh and wanted to tone back. God help me if I had thrown somethig at him last night! I'm sure that he would have taken the soap, then peed on me! As it is I had to admit defeat. I cannot keep living with such a cunning animal-I am no match for it. I ate breakfast and started looking for a new place to stay.