Rant

Okay, I reached my limit with critters over the weekend.  I was used to sharing my house with geckos.  I would catch sight of them from time to time but they were always hurrying away to hide themselves.  They eat bugs so my price for their bug extermination was to sweep up the occasional droppings.  When I came back from nearly 3 weeks on vacation I realized that there were many sweeping opportunities, I just did it everyday so I did not notice.

Big roaches (aka palmetto bugs in Florida) and I did not live quite so peacefully.  Once when I was taking a shower I felt something on my upper arm and looked down and there was a big roach on my upper arm.  Luckily I always were flip flops in the shower so I brushed it off and crushed it. But again when I got back from vacation they must have been using my shower as a hotel because when I pulled the shower curtain closed there were 3 on the floor and one crawling up my leg.  Flip flops work well as roach killers.

But my most recent experience was the final straw (I hope).  One night I walked into the kitchen and flipped on the light just in time to see the back half of a rat disappearing behind the shelf/table that I had had built.  I actually let out a scream when I saw it (did not know that I was that kind of person) but quickly shut up.  I did not go into the kitchen but turned around and left.  The next day I looked for signs of my visitor and decided that it was just passing through and was not setting up residence. Boy was I wrong. This past weekend I noticed that something had been chewing on my sponges so I decided to check things out again.  I found definite signs of the rat this time but was not quite prepared for most absolutely definite sign that I found.  I lifted up my cook top and found 5 baby rats.  I think they were fairly new born -- pink, hairless and helpless, with about two inch body lengths.  I was so grossed out I had to walk out of the kitchen.  I finally decided that I could sweep them into a dustpan and flush them down the toilet (low flush toilets are not part of Gambian life) so I went back into the kitchen and followed my plan. Mama never said there'd be days like this.

End of rant.