The Rat in My Closet

I came home one night and I'd accidentally left the balcony door open. This wasn't a big deal until I climbed the stairs to my room, flicked on the light and saw a rat run into my bathroom. Realizing that there was no escape for Mr. Rat except the way he came, I just stood and stared at the bathroom thinking, "There's a rat in my bathroom. There's a rat in my bathroom! THERE'S A RAT IN MY BATHROOM!".

Not only did Mr. Rat have access to my bathroom, but also my closet with the majority of my clothes. I closed the bathroom door. I opened the door, went in, and closed the door behind me. I got up on the counter and collected all the things I would need to get ready for church in the morning. I didn't see Mr. Rat, but knew he was there somewhere. I climbed back off the counter and escaped back out the door.

Then, I realized that I have a nice pair of leather shoes in my open closet that I didn't want Mr. Rat to feast on. So, I went back in and saw Mr. Rat run into a second part of the closet which didn't have much in it. I closed that door so he was trapped in the closet, grabbed my shoes and left the bathroom again.

Before going to church the next day, I stopped at the grocery store and bought some poison. I stuck it in my purse and carried it into church, so then it became holy rat poison. (Really I just didn't want to leave in the car baking in the sun.) When I got home, I made a paper cone to dump the poison into the closet then promptly closed the door and hoped for the best.

On Monday, my housekeeper, Joseph, was assigned the task of opening the closet door.

When I returned from work, Joseph told me he'd spent a "bon ti tan" ( a good while) chasing the rat around the bathroom until he was able to kill it. I didn't ask exactly where he'd killed it or how. I'm just glad it was dead and that I was going to move out of that house in the next two weeks.

The moral of the story is: Don't leave your balcony door open for small (or in this case rabbit-sized) critters to enter, and if you do, let someone else do the dirty work.