An Evening Visitor

Karma, sweet karma. A few days ago, one of the students found a huge spider in their room. As far as I was concerned, though, they were on the ground floor (I’m on the fourth) in another building, so it seemed pretty remote. Still, I had my fair share of laughs at other people’s expense as they squirmed at the thought of behemoth arachnids showing up in their bedroom. I didn’t stress about it.



And then tonight, I was woken up from 2 minutes (literally, I checked my clock) of sleep by some noises in my living room. I looked, and there were no robbers, which was a relief. Unless they were afraid of half-naked white guys, I think I might have found myself a bit unprepared for any sort of intimidation. I laid down for another minute, and then heard strange noises in my bathroom. All of a sudden, I was stressing about the spiders.

I turn on the light once more, look in the bathroom, and thought, possibly for the first time in my life, “Thank God, it’s a rat.” I tried to close the door, but the rat was faster. It streaked out, and into the little crevice between my bed and the wall. As far as my apartment furnishings go, the only possible instruments of death that I could think of for a rat this size would be my knives; I’m not about to sully my kitchen knife on rat, and the thought of me chasing a rat with a military-issue search and rescue knife seemed a bit absurd. And messy. So that was out. I had nothing to catch it with, and besides, it was raining outside and I didn’t want to take it all the way downstairs. So I moved my nightstand to block off his entrance. With him trapped, and the hour so late, I laid down and went back to sleep, lulled by the faint bumping noises coming from 8 inches below.

UPDATE:: I woke up this morning, and lifted my mattress to make sure the rat was still there. He wasn’t. However, three of my saltines were. The little bugger stole my crackers! Then on the way out, I saw that he gnawed his way through one of my hackey sacks. This means war, rat. This means war…