Warning: Rodents Ahead

Grandma Nancy, that warning was for you.

I had a very traumatic experience last night.

I was laying on my bed, watching a movie on my laptop (definitely go watch the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car?) when I thought I saw movement on the pile of laundry I had been sorting. I looked up and It. Was. A. RAT! I reacted like any self-respecting, independent woman would: I screamed, jumped up on my bed and started yelling that I needed someone to help me. One of the guys in the house came to my closed door, and said, "Ok, I'm going to come in now." And I'm just screaming about a rat. He helped me jump off the bed into the hallway and I went and sat on the kitchen table so my bare feet weren't anywhere near the floor. When he left the room with a shoe the other idiot girl who was in the house said, "For god's sake, don't kill it!" Don't kill it?? It's a freaking RAT!! I responded with, "This is why we keep the doors shut!!!" These people go live on a deserted island for three months and completely forget how to live in civilization. I won't even go into them letting the doors slam...

John searched and searched and finally asked if I had imagined it because he couldn't find it. So now everybody thinks I'm imagining rats in my room. I waited about twenty minutes and finally had to go back because I couldn't sit there and watch the Simpsons with them. I needed to do my laundry. Another guy in the house walked by and asked me if I was going to sleep there that night. I almost started crying when I said that I had nowhere else to go.

About an hour later Pete got up to go to the bathroom and came right back into the kitchen saying, "I found your rat. It's in the guy's bathroom." He disposed of it and he and John are now my heroes. I don't know how I would have slept if it hadn't been found; I had a hard enough time sleeping last night as it was. Guess I would have had to convince myself I was crazy and didn't actually see it.

I lived in DC for four years and never once had a nasty bug or rodent in my apartment. Hawaii, it takes four months for a rat. It's one thing when there are cockroaches outside or the little geckos that get in the house (those freak me out too, but to a lesser extent), but it's entirely different when it's a rat. I can't wait to go home.

I guess there's one silver lining that my mom pointed out. "All I can say is, at least it wasn't a snake." Amen.