The Sleep Thief

I was enjoying the last few minutes of my much needed beauty sleep just before dawn (you know that's when the sleep is nicest), when suddenly I heard the sound of something rustling through stuff in my wardrobe. My eyes snapped open faster than the speed of light. No! No!! No!!! It couldn't be. All the drowsiness disappeared in that minute and my eyes stayed wide open, focused on my open wardrobe, and scanning the room all around every other minute. Sure enough, in a couple of minutes, I heard the sound again. Eyes peeled on wardrobe and in the next second, my worst fear was confirmed.  I saw a grey little body hurtle out of the wardrobe and across the room in a blur. Only one species in creation fit that profile: rat!!!

Zikes! I groaned from deep inside. How could this have happened? My body was covered in goose pimples already. To think that that thing had been taking a walk in my wardrobe with its germ infested body! Gosh, it was just too much to bear. Memories of my previous encounters with rats came flooding through my mind - like the time they ate the wires of almost all the electronics I owned at the time, or when one of my old roommates fell hard from the top of an upper bunk because a rat ran over her in her sleep. There was yet another time when a different roommate woke up screaming with blood pouring from her forehead due to a small but awfully deep gash that could only have been inflicted by a rat. In fact,  my experience with rats can be summed up in the chorus of Olamide's hit song melo melo.

With all that at the back of my mind, I immediately swung into action. Thank God I didn't have anywhere to go that morning. I cleaned out my wardrobe and turned the whole room upside down. I spent most of the morning cleaning and rearranging. I had to get rid of the feel of the rat's presence and be ready for it if it dared come back. Done with the cleaning, I went to ask my mum for those sticky rat gums that trap them. She said she had no traps, but there was this rat poison she got from a vendor. The young man had claimed that it was his special mix and that it worked like magic. Mum said she hadn't gotten to prove he was correct and that this was a good opportunity to tell. So we put the poison in several spots around the room and after that, it was simply a waiting game.

I must admit I was skeptical at first. I had formed the believe that rats have developed immunity to poisons, all the ones I had used hadn't seemed to work. Anyway, I hoped this one would. If not, I would be condemned to an absence of good sleep till the matter was resolved, for that is the way of rats, they rob you of peaceful sleep. That is apart from all the other mischief they make.

I didn't quite sleep well that night. The next morning, I was glad I didn't hear any movement around the room. Maybe the rat didn't come back after all. I was walking to take a look at my face in the mirror when my slippered foot stepped on something soft. Must be a handkerchief or something, I thought to myself. When I looked down to pick it up, it turned out to be a rat. A very dead rat! That didn't stop me from screaming and jumping on the bed in fright though. "Phew, relax girl, it's dead!" And then I took a good look at the tiny little thing that had harassed me for two days.

The dead little critter

The poison worked like magic indeed! I went to find mum. "That rat poison vendor was right mum, it's like magic! How much more of that stuff do we have?" She said there was very little left, she hadn't bought a lot because she wasn't sure of its efficacy, and she didn't even know if she would still find that vendor.

Ah! Not find him ke? We just have to find him, when we do, I'll buy out his stock of this wonderful rat poison and write the king of the rat's a three word letter: Bring it on!

I could even gift you some of the poison if you have similar rat problems. Ciao!

Cover image via Dgiwire.com