Encounter of the Ferral Kind

Sweet slumber.

I was jolted awake at 2:30am one morning by the uncomfortable sensation of something small and heavy sitting on my ankles. I got up and turned on the light, and since sleep had completely escaped me, sat on my bed and started writing in my journal. About 10 minutes later from my all purpose room a tiny furry fuzzball scurried into my room and underneath my drawers. I was shocked and horrified.

A few minutes later he or she (henceforth to be named as he) moved outwards to leave and saw me and darted immediately back under the drawers. I was amazed that he could be as terrified of me as I could be of him. I stayed sitting there until it was time for work and then got ready and left in a bad mood because i had not had enough sleep.

I had been hearing scurrying type noises in the roof above my head and around the sides of the walls for a few days but didn't think anything of it. At the time i thought it was a trapped bird. I thought it was a mouse, but it was too big for a mouse, so my conclusion is that it was a rat. Ew a rat.

I told the family i was staying with and we tried a number of remedies - keeping the cat in my room at nights and setting traps in the alcove type storage area. Neither worked. My room is separate to the house but attached to the garage so probably it came through from that way up through the roof and down into my room. I was mortified.

After a few days of cat and trap didn't bring forth any dead bodies the bait came out. It looked like a small bar of blue soap. We put it up high away from the cats reach, since it can apparently kill pets. Now i thought the idea of rat bait is that it makes the creature thirsty so it leaves and goes to water. One night (after the bait had disappeared about three times) i woke up to hear what sounded like something being dragged on the tin shed above me. I hoped it was the rat in its dying throes.

The next day when i got home there was a bad smell in my room. The next day it was worse. Putrid decaying flesh smell. I moved my furniture around to make sure it wasn't underneath, but i'm pretty sure its in the roof. The smell is much worse near the shower. And every day it gets worse. I keep walking in to find blowflies in my room. Its so gross.

I've been sleeping upstairs in the house, thankfully theres a spare bed. Im glad the rat is dead but i wish it had died outside, on the roof, where the birds could have finished off its vermin remains.