Dancing Over Our Heads
We sleep in an essentially tranquil setting at night. There are no street lights coming in the windows and no cars driving by on busy streets, but there is the annoying sound of dancing over our heads…or maybe it is more like wrestling. Either way, we sporadically wake up in the night to hear the sounds of our unwanted guests overhead. It is not just rats, but bats and birds as well. Though their activities are kept secret by the thin layer of ceiling board, we are keenly aware of their existence.
So every other week or so, we have a local boy crawl up into the attic to track down as many of the critters as he can to ‘dispose’ of them. Upon his most recent expedition, I asked him what he found. He replied that he got one bat (4 got away) and 3 rats. Another Cameroonian standing by said, ‘Oh, so not many.’ I love the candor expressed in that statement. Three rats simply isn’t that much here. I guess we need to redefine our concept of what are ‘a lot’ of pests.
