How do I know two years in the Peace Corps has changed me? Well, anyone that knew me before the Peace Corps knows that I was well, a bit of a germ freak. I obsessively washed my hands, cleaned my room, and freaked out at the sign of a bug. If I ever saw a roach, I would simply try to trap it under a container, and leave a little note on top of the container for my dad or brothers to kill the insect inside. Not the best strategy, but I thought it was brilliant at the time.
Boy have things changed. Evidence #1: This past week we were making a compost at one of the elementary schools and there must have been a roach inside one of the bags of organic materials that one of the kids brought in. This huge roach, literally the size of my fist came scurrying out of the compost. My first thought was ¨Wow, look at the size of that thing. That may be bigger than that big one I saw on my ceiling once.¨ After marveling at the size and how slow this giant roach tried to move, I realized I should probably kill it. If the director of the school starts to associate compost with roaches she´s going to put an end to this really soon, so without thinking twice about it I smashed that sucker with my flip-flops.
Evidence #2: A while back I opened my front door to head to a friend´s house, and this huge rat zoomed by. I screamed, slammed the door, and called my friend and told him due to fear of the giant rat outside my door which is now hiding somewhere in this garage with me (my apartment is in someone´s garage), I couldn´t come over. I didn’t see the rat again for a while, but I assumed it must still be around.
A few months later, I started hearing noises in the middle of the night on my metal roof. After a few nights of listening to the noises trying to figure out what it could be, I realized it was like a Tom and Jerry movie on my roof, the rat has to cross my roof to get back to the garage while trying not to get eating by the neighbor’s cat. So the cat and rat ¨play¨ on my roof at nights. Not a gross concept at all, right? I actually started to find it amusing. Until one night about a week ago, the stupid rat must have falling into the draining pipe along the side of my apartment, and spent the entire night squealing. If you´ve never had to hear a rat in a pipe squeal consider yourself lucky.
My theory on this rat, is well, there´s nothing I can do about him, and as long as he stays outside of my apartment I don’t care where he lives in this garage. Just don’t enter the apartment!
Two nights ago, the rat and I had quite the startling encounter. A year ago it would have freaked me out, I would have ran into my apartment, slammed the door, and hid in my mosquito net for the rest of the night, and probably have nightmares of rats attacking me. Now though… I was brushing my teeth (my sink and bathroom are outside of my apartment), and I heard this movement under my sink where I have some stuff stored, next thing I know this cat size rat runs right in front of my feet along my bathroom wall and into his home, the storage unit right outside my apartment door. My first thought was ¨damn I can´t believe he just ran out in front of me, aren’t rats suppose to be scared of people?¨, my second thought was ¨he must be eating our garbage, cause that rat is definitely bigger than a few months ago.¨ What should have been my reaction? Holy shit, a rat by my feat, run!
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