Okay, I have a rat in my kitchen, which actually is a room separated from the main house by a porch, and I have a snake in our outside storeroom, and Roy is still in Yaounde and soon to be on his way to Lyon, France, because his tooth problem, with 4 excruciating visits for a root canal to the (one and only) Yaounde dentist has ended up with a still painful and swollen mouth and tooth and jaw. So, what do I do? For the rat, and I mean rat, not mouse – I have seen it 3 times now, scurrying into the back of the instrument panel on our washer. I set up a trap, a small usual mousetrap, but the guy just ate the peanut butter off it. So I have reverted to our Congo style trap. I had to laugh, because my friend Susan, when invited to see this trap, asked, “Oh, is it on the floor?” The answer is yes. Here’s the trap:
So, the rat goes out to the end of the stick to eat the peanut butter and PLOP! into the barrel! Ha! Well, it hasn’t worked in 3 nights yet, so maybe on Monday we’ll have to take the washing machine out on the porch and “smoke/bugspray” him out!
The snake is another problem altogether. He is in Roy’s workshop/storeroom, which is like a garage in contents; (ie every kind of tool, fuel barrels, bikes to be repaired etc) stuff stacked everywhere, but only has a people sized door. I saw the snake as I was getting a box for sending Fulfulde Ajamiya script scripture books to a village. The snake was at the door, a 10″ long black one. I turned my head to look for a weapon, and in it went!!! It’s still in there and will have to wait for my knight in shining armor to get back. Rats in the washer I can handle. Snakes in the cluttered storeroom? Uh-uh.
Hey, you want to read more about life here at Gamboula? The Turks’ homeschool teacher has a wonderful way with words and a great sense of humor. Go to http://sdrembert.blogspot.com/
