OH, RATS!

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It’s odd how a relatively small thing can throw us for such a loop, how small, new grievances can revive old, supposedly forgotten ones. I’m going to need your prayers to get over the snit I’m in! I’m completely off track, spiritually.

Yesterday I had resolved to get rid of an old mattress we have under our bed. The bed’s own mattress, you are to understand, is spring mounted and hinged at the head of the bed, so that by pulling a cord at the foot of the bed, you can easily lift the whole thing like the lid of a trunk. The area below the mattress, in fact, functions as a trunk. It’s a large storage box. In it we had stored a small mattress. It was time, I thought, to get rid of that.

This morning when we opened the bed we found on top of, under, and around that old mattress the shells from about a kilo’s worth of pumpkin seeds. (That’s a lot; pumpkin seeds don’t weigh much!) They were mostly at the head of the bed, and on both sides as if two people had been eating, or one person had eaten twice, using one side of the bed on the first occasion, and the other side on the next occasion. And scattered throughout this mess were hundreds of rat turds. Yes, rat turds, and there’s no mistake about it. I’ve raised enough “pet” rats to know that much. And the thin, oval remnants of two bars of soap, different colors, gnawed upon.

Demetrios is going to sit his brother down and set some limits on his use of our house in our absence. Go ahead and cook on my stove; I can get the black ick off. Nap in our bed or spend the night there, alone, if you need to. Go ahead and use my washer. (Why? I always wondered. He does have a washing machine of his own. Answer: to wash our bed sheets, of course.) Okay. I can put the washer’s settings back to where they were.

But no smoking, no eating in bed, and no putting anything in the toilet other than what it is made to accept!