When Animals Attack

The last three days of my life have felt like I’m on that show on Discovery? Animal Planet? whatever - where people talk about their bizarre and terrifying encounters with animals. It all started Friday morning….

Friday, 11:00am
I’m at the office, normal Friday. All the staff is gathered around the big table in the main room of our office for the weekly staff meeting. Part way through I get up to use the restroom. Nothing out of the ordinary. Until I flush the toilet. As soon as I do the pink tail and gray behind of a RAT becomes visible as it attempts to not get flushed down the toilet. Let me try and set the stage. Our office toilet has no actual seat, so it’s just the rim. I would not have sat down if a rat was visible. It was HIDING IN THE TOILET under the seat somehow. I could have been bitten for all I know! So, obviously I panic, scream and run out of the bathroom into the main room where everyone is looking at me like - what just happened - and all I can say is “RAT! In the bathroom!” while freaking out. Now everyone groans, and acts like “oh, she’s being so dramatic our wimpy American can’t handle anything” – typical. They think I’m such a baby because I don’t handle cockroach/rat encounters well. So the men go into the bathroom as I hide in the kitchen attempting to find it. My manager assures me that on Monday all the boxes will be taken out and searched for rats. I am amazed at how no one thinks this is a big deal.

So we sit back down as she’s telling me about the cleaning plan and I say “well, in the mean time no one better go to the toilet because it’s hiding IN THE TOILET”. Now this garners what I thought the appropriate reactions should be when I ran out in the first place. Lots of “YYYOOOHH! Zoleka?!?! In the toilet??”. YES. IN THE TOILET. Now people respond with the shock and disgust I thought the situation called for. The men go back into the bathroom, armed with a stick, kill the poor (but gross) thing, and flush(??!!) it down the toilet after attempting to fish it out of the water with wires. I didn’t watch any of it I was too shaken up by my VERY close encounter. I just saw lots of entering and exiting of the bathroom with wires/stick. Man. What a terror. Needless to say, I’m not sure if I’m ever going to be able to use that bathroom again.

Saturday, 1:00pm
In my last blog I told you about the family of birds that was living in-between the ceiling and the roof in my host sisters bedroom. This was not only noisy but also as you may know birds carry bugs like lice and bed bugs. Gross. Well, the only way to get them out was to take off the roof, which our handyman did Saturday afternoon after sealing off all holes that were there between the wall and roof (to prevent further bird nesting situations). Well, as expected the birds freaked out when the roof came off and he tried getting them out. The two baby birds (which were adult sized I might add) haven’t left the nest yet, so aren’t sure how to fly properly. SO. Imagine, I’m minding my own business, reading a lovely column in a magazine about adventurous South Africans, lounging on my bed when all of a sudden a bird is flying through my burglar bars INTO MY ROOM in a panicked state. This was very startling. I also have a tiny room and I didn’t want to be attacked. I’m screaming at the top of my lungs (much more so than with the rat to my surprise…I think it’s because the bird was also freaking out). I jump off my bed, and run out of my room. All the while thinking…how am I going to get it out?! Well the brave Aunt of my host sister runs in as soon as I run out, grabs the bird and throws it out of my room. Poor thing, it was really struggling. What a traumatic first flying experience. I hope it made it somewhere safe! Thank goodness for brave South Africans. I would have needed a broom at least…

Sunday, 10:30am
I’m having a lazy Sunday morning in bed, watching Inception (which I really enjoyed this time – first time I saw it I was just confused). All of a sudden I hear something moving in my ceiling…and I hear chirping. F-in a. All I could think at this point was, are you JOKING?! Now there is a bird in MY ceiling. So I go outside to the party that has picked up where the night before left (it was my host brothers fourth birthday party and it was a rockin’ party Saturday). So, I find my host sister outside and explain that, I think there is bird in my ceiling now. This is when I am told that only one of the baby birds got out of the house yesterday (of course, why only one flew into my room. Duh.). The other one flew to my side of the house. Wonderful. I’m told nothing can be done about it now because of the impending rain and the not so sober state of our handy man. Fabulous. So, all I can do is be annoyed and go back to watching Inception with the occasional chirp added.

I am happy to report that all is quiet on the bird front currently. Hopefully it’s off sleeping somewhere other than above my room. But what’s next? Is a cow going to ram me? Is a goat going to bite me? Chicken attack? I can only imagine. I’m going to try not to think about it because as soon as I do I’ll just draw it to me. I’m hopeful that my animal bad luck streak is OVER. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

The good news is that I had a really fun time at my host brothers birthday party – he is just too cute! I got him a toy monster truck and some strawberry candies. I hope he likes them! I also made some new friends at the party that are my age which is really exciting! I had a blast. And today I made delicious pizza and got to watch Extreme Couponing on TLC for the first time. Have you seen that show before?! A lady had a grocery bill of $600-something and she ended up paying $2-something!!!!! Can you believe it?! On the one hand those people are totally insane and all boarder on just really OCD hoarders…but on the other hand…genius. But mostly insane. All in all a wonderful weekend, except that I didn’t actually do any of the mass amounts of work that I intended/needed to do sooooooo. I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it, which will be tomorrow morning at 9am. Yay!

Take care, and remember, always check for rats in your toilet!