A Story

Once upon a time there was girl named Jess…

Jess lived in a VERY nice convent in Uganda. Her friend Nora once said, “Jess is the Jay-Z of Uganda. Her house is big pimpin’.” Yet, despite her super-clean big pimpin’ house, Jess would find mysterious droppings in her bedroom, almost daily. Jess cleaned meticulously, sweeping, mopping, and dousing everything in bleach on a regular basis, but to no avail. The reason that the droppings were so mysterious was this: other than lizards, Jess never saw or heard anything in her house. She did see lizards, though. Jess didn’t mind lizards at all; in fact, she liked them, because they ate bugs. Jess convinced herself (because she had seen nothing else) that maybe lizards poop. She asked friends, but no one knew: do lizards really poop? Jess concluded that lizards MUST poop, because she found droppings in relatively high places, like on her desk, or on the top of her toilet tank. These were also places that she had seen lizards, and certainly places that only lizards could reach.

One day, about a month after the droppings first started appearing, Jess heard some rustling in her kitchen. She everything out from the wall, and a rat ran through her kitchen and under her front door. Jess was pretty freaked out by this, especially since her friends were coming to visit the very next night. But, her friends came to visit, and they all had a wonderful time, no rats involved.

The night after her friends left, Jess decided that she would block the door so that the rat could not get back in. She looked around for something that would cover the crack under the door, and found her chacos. Chacos were the best, most durable shoes in the world— heavy duty hiking sandals that were guaranteed for life. Surely, this would work. Jess placed her beloved sandals outside her door, effectively blocking the rat-sized space between the bottom of her door and the floor. Jess slept somewhat more peacefully that night.

The next day, Jess opened her door and picked up her chacos. To her surprise, several little rubber bits rained down. Upon closer inspection, Jess discovered the following:

A chunk out of her favorite shoes. She knew Ugandan rats were tough, but tougher than chacos??? This was too much. Jess declared war. She was not a very tough warrior though, and actually cried a little bit out of sheer frustration. Not only was an evil rat in her house that she had kept so diligently clean, this rat was so evil that it had eaten her favorite shoes. Jess felt like a wuss because her friend Hannah had had rats in her ceiling every night since she got to site. But, at least Hannah’s rats had only eaten telephone wires, not chacos! Jess felt a big mixture of shock, fear, disgust, and anger. She felt like this:

Jess couldn’t decide whether having a rat-eaten chunk out of her chacos was just disgusting, or if it perhaps increased her coolness factor by a little bit. After all, she thought, you have to be pretty darn cool to have had anything destroy your indestructible chacos. (She knew this was a ridiculous thought, but she was trying very very hard to be optimistic.) But, cool isn’t really the right word for having a rat in your house. Jess decided it was just plain disgusting. She then moved on to rocks. She found several flat rocks, and lined them up outside her door. Certainly a rat wouldn’t gnaw through rocks.

A couple nights later (when the electricity was off, of course) Jess walked into her bathroom. She was wearing her hottest fashion accessory—her headlamp— and saw the rat in her shower. The rat saw her too, and ran to her kitchen.

Jess had had enough. She went outside and found the convent cat, and eventually got it into her kitchen. The cat was only half-way tame, so this took a substantial effort. The cat didn’t seem to notice anything unusual. Jess couldn’t find the rat in her kitchen either. She hoped that it had run outside when she went to get the cat. She let the cat go back outside, and went to bed. During the night, she heard some banging around, but she didn’t feel like getting up. Since there was no electricity, there was not much searching she could do, and no lights just plain made things scarier. Plus, she suspected that the rat lived in the store room next to her kitchen, and she couldn’t really tell where the noise was coming from. The store room did not belong to her, so she didn’t have the key. She slept, sort of.

The next morning, Jess went to her kitchen. The door of her cabinet was open (but, it had a tendency to swing open on its own sometimes). She looked in her cabinets. She found droppings all over the place, and a lot of her spices had been knocked over. This time she was really really grossed out. She also heard some shuffling, but couldn’t find the rat. She began removing everything from her cabinets. Finally, the rat ran out. It ran to the front door, but couldn’t get out… the rocks were still there, and they worked very well at blocking the space under the door. Unfortunately, the rat was blocked from going out, rather than blocked from coming in. After realizing it could not get through rocks, the rat ran to her bedroom. Jess followed, by this point more pissed off than scared. She looked around her bedroom, but couldn’t find the rat. She heard something behind her wardrobe. She looked. She didn’t see anything. She looked harder. She looked up. Balancing itself in mid-air, she found the NAVY SEAL CAPTAIN of RATS:

It was not the captain because of its size, for it was still young. It was the captain because of its pure athletic talent. With its back pressed against the wall and its feet pressed against the back of the wardrobe, the rat said, “Hi Jess. I know I’m about a foot and a half off the ground right now, but, you know, just practicing my wall-scaling skills today. Thought I would rest my hairy little in-shape butt on your outlet here for a second.”

Jess was horrified. She went and got the convent cat again. After another substantial effort and a few scratches, Jess finally got the cat into her bedroom. The rat was no longer on the wall, and the cat couldn’t find it either. Jess knew the rat had to be in her house somewhere, probably still in her bedroom. This time, she was not going to be idealistic and assume that it had run out during her struggle with the cat. She left the cat in her bedroom and shut her bedroom door. She then turned to cleaning her poop-filled cabinets.

Not five minutes later, she heard, “Jesca! Jesca!” It was her counterpart (i.e. boss). Her counterpart knew Jess had been having rat problems, and, as Jess had not shown up to work that morning, came to check on her. Jess told her counterpart that the rat was in her bedroom, as was the cat. Her counterpart laughed. Jess took her counterpart to her bedroom to show her the cat. Soon after she opened the door, a rustling noise was heard by all. The cat sprang to attention, the counterpart actually believed Jess, and Jess got the heebie-jeebies.

The noise had come from the wardrobe. Jess and her counterpart wanted to move the wardrobe so that the rat would run out, but the wardrobe was too heavy, in part because there were many books on top. Jess stood on a chair to remove the books. As she was doing this, the rat ran out, with the cat in hot pursuit. Jess was very glad to be standing on a chair at this moment.

Unfortunately for the rat, Jess had an unlikely secret weapon: a lovely long mosquito net hanging around her bed. It went all the way to the floor. As the evil rat ran under her bed, it got tangled up in the mosquito net. This was the cat’s lucky day...

There was much untangling to be done. At first, Jess and her counterpart thought that the cat was just sitting on the mosquito net, but they soon realized the mosquito net was much more involved then they thought. The cat was biting the rat, under the bed, through the mosquito net. Jess and her counterpart had to move the bed, because the cat didn’t want to come out. After pushing the bed a good distance, Jess and her counterpart managed to wrestle the mosquito net away from the cat. This last part actually didn’t take too long, as the cat seemed to realize that it could soon have an un-mosquito-net-wrapped rat, and cooperated nicely.

Jess had to clean up blood off of her floor and had to wash her mosquito net, so she was pretty grossed out by the whole affair. But, mostly she was very happy to be rid of the rat. The cat (who was also very happy) became her personal hero, and Jess slept peacefully ever after in Ugandan paradise.


Actually, this is no fairy tale, so let’s be honest: Jess’s nerves are shot. Most concerning to her is the fact that, for a whole month, she managed to sleep through a rat running around her house, all around her bed, on her desk, on her toilet tank, etc. She has always been thankful that she is an extremely heavy sleeper, but now she is not so sure that this is a good thing. She sleeps just as heavily, but certainly doesn’t fall asleep as fast as she used to. She sleeps clutching her headlamp, or, sometimes, with it on her head. She also sleeps holding or wearing her glasses. She is extremely jumpy, especially at night.
However, things are definitely looking up: Jess is slowly but surely becoming accustomed to the normal, non-rat noises in her house. She figures she’ll be good after another rat-free week or so.

The end, hopefully!