Regular readers of The Gunsmoke Files will know me as an animal lover. I work hard to keep three dogs in the lap of luxury, lose sleep over how to deal with the mice that are determined to live under my bathroom sink and choose to believe the Pest Control guy’s explanation of what happened to the squirrels he removed from my roof. (Yes there is a Squirrel Ranch in Northern Colorado, go look it up!). However, there are two species of animals for which I have no love whatsoever - mosquitoes and rats. I’ll save my rant about mosquitoes for another day. I can after all, only handle so many traumas at once. Instead I’m going to tell you my rat story.
Spending as I did, several months as a hippy in Indonesia one becomes used to the sight of rats. Deep, wide gutters line most roads with open sewage and polluted water running freely. Not surprisingly, rats love this arrangement and can be seen pretty much everywhere. In the early weeks of my stay I wasn’t fazed in the slightest by their presence. Even a visit to a museum in Bogor, south of Jakarta, which had on display a recently caught but thankfully deceased and stuffed rat measuring (no kidding) 24-inches from nose to tail, didn’t cause me any undue distress.
No, it was during a long and terrifying night in Berastagi on the Island of Java, that I developed the phobia which has stayed with me to this day.
I’d met up with a fellow Brit named Michael who, for a few days at least, was following the same route as me, so as was common among the backpacker crowd, we shared rooms as we went. This had the advantage of affording more privacy than the communal dormitories, without the expense of a single room. These rooms varied tremendously in quality from idyllic beach bungalows with the South China Sea lapping gently a few feet away, to squalid hovels barely fit for habitation even by such impoverished social lepers as us.
At first glance, the lodgings looked better than most. The family run Bed and Breakfast, familiarly known as a “Homestay” was clean, the food was good and the owners were friendly. Our landlady showed as a room which, while rather on the pricy side considering its lack of size, looked plenty big enough for us. We weren’t bothered by the fact that the two single beds were pushed together under the same tent-like linen sheet which served as a mosquito net. After all, we’d both been roughing it for months now and of course, were perfectly secure in our heterosexuality. Possibly because we were focused on this, neither of us noticed that as we were below street level, the outside wall was in fact the lining of the open sewer.
All was well until around 1am when, I turned over and momentarily found myself gazing sleepily towards the gray-white wall of our linen sheet cocoon. It moved. In my sluggish state, my brain refused to acknowledge what I was actually witnessing and because of this, I was allowed to remain in blissful ignorance for a few moments longer. However, my innocence was short-lived because almost immediately, I felt Michael stiffen, then leap bolt upright with a scream. Simultaneously, we both let loose with loud, long and expletive laced discourse, the gist of which was “Oh my word, we appear to be sharing our sleeping space with a number of undomesticated rodents. I’m not sure I’m altogether happy about that.”
For it was true. As our brains rapidly shifted from “Park” to “Overdrive” we realized that we weren’t simply talking about one or two rats here, but an entire herd of them roaming freely around the room. Encased as we were, in linen, we couldn’t actually see them, but the numerous bulges moving along the tent walls were all too obvious clues as to the activity just a few inches away. Not only that, but we could hear many more of the little monsters scurrying around on the floor. I’m not the world’s biggest guy and Michael’s no heavyweight either but it was astonishing just what a small area of space the two of us were currently occupying in the center of that bed. As the rats continued their nocturnal exploration of our bed, our room and our souls, we clung to one another, all the while gibbering in foul-mouthed terror.
“What the hell are we going to do?” yelled Michael at the top of his lungs. “How about we put the light on?” I screamed back, “Maybe they’ll run away.” After a few moments reflection we determined that while this was a stellar idea, it presented the thorny problem of how to reach the switch, located impossibly far away across a rat strewn floor. Grisly though it was, I had no intention of leaving the sanctuary of our cocoon and neither apparently had Michael. We discussed strategy for a while, (“you f*****g do it!” “no, YOU f*****g do it!”), before I scored the winning goal by pointing out that Michael was nearest the light switch.
I reasoned that if I held his left arm, he could lean out of the bed and albeit at full stretch, reach the elusive switch. It was hard to argue with the logic, particularly as we couldn’t think of a better idea so after encouraging me to take my responsibilities seriously, namely by promising retribution involving rudimentary surgery on my private parts, Michael screwed his eyes tight shut, clasped my hand in his, stretched out his other arm, and flicked the switch.
The hideous noise generated by an army of rats scurrying for cover was almost enough to make me drop him onto the floor but I manfully kept my side of the bargain and in moments he was back under the linen sheet, shivering in horror and cursing up a storm. It was a long time before the sun gradually illuminated our sanctuary, but the light stayed on, our eyes stayed open and we stayed upright. I’m not entirely sure, but I think it was around that time my hair first started going gray.
Michael moved on the following day and I didn’t see him again until a chance meeting several weeks later. I had business in Berastagi however, and needed to stay one more night. I moved out of that awful room of course and into the clean, modern and rat free dormitory where I slept like a baby. Until about 1am, when I was awoken from my slumber by a distant and muffled scream. “OH….MY….GOOOOOODDDDD!”.
Smiling smugly, I turned over and drifting back to sleep, thought,
“I bet I know which room he’s in.”
Spending as I did, several months as a hippy in Indonesia one becomes used to the sight of rats. Deep, wide gutters line most roads with open sewage and polluted water running freely. Not surprisingly, rats love this arrangement and can be seen pretty much everywhere. In the early weeks of my stay I wasn’t fazed in the slightest by their presence. Even a visit to a museum in Bogor, south of Jakarta, which had on display a recently caught but thankfully deceased and stuffed rat measuring (no kidding) 24-inches from nose to tail, didn’t cause me any undue distress.
No, it was during a long and terrifying night in Berastagi on the Island of Java, that I developed the phobia which has stayed with me to this day.
I’d met up with a fellow Brit named Michael who, for a few days at least, was following the same route as me, so as was common among the backpacker crowd, we shared rooms as we went. This had the advantage of affording more privacy than the communal dormitories, without the expense of a single room. These rooms varied tremendously in quality from idyllic beach bungalows with the South China Sea lapping gently a few feet away, to squalid hovels barely fit for habitation even by such impoverished social lepers as us.
At first glance, the lodgings looked better than most. The family run Bed and Breakfast, familiarly known as a “Homestay” was clean, the food was good and the owners were friendly. Our landlady showed as a room which, while rather on the pricy side considering its lack of size, looked plenty big enough for us. We weren’t bothered by the fact that the two single beds were pushed together under the same tent-like linen sheet which served as a mosquito net. After all, we’d both been roughing it for months now and of course, were perfectly secure in our heterosexuality. Possibly because we were focused on this, neither of us noticed that as we were below street level, the outside wall was in fact the lining of the open sewer.
All was well until around 1am when, I turned over and momentarily found myself gazing sleepily towards the gray-white wall of our linen sheet cocoon. It moved. In my sluggish state, my brain refused to acknowledge what I was actually witnessing and because of this, I was allowed to remain in blissful ignorance for a few moments longer. However, my innocence was short-lived because almost immediately, I felt Michael stiffen, then leap bolt upright with a scream. Simultaneously, we both let loose with loud, long and expletive laced discourse, the gist of which was “Oh my word, we appear to be sharing our sleeping space with a number of undomesticated rodents. I’m not sure I’m altogether happy about that.”
For it was true. As our brains rapidly shifted from “Park” to “Overdrive” we realized that we weren’t simply talking about one or two rats here, but an entire herd of them roaming freely around the room. Encased as we were, in linen, we couldn’t actually see them, but the numerous bulges moving along the tent walls were all too obvious clues as to the activity just a few inches away. Not only that, but we could hear many more of the little monsters scurrying around on the floor. I’m not the world’s biggest guy and Michael’s no heavyweight either but it was astonishing just what a small area of space the two of us were currently occupying in the center of that bed. As the rats continued their nocturnal exploration of our bed, our room and our souls, we clung to one another, all the while gibbering in foul-mouthed terror.
“What the hell are we going to do?” yelled Michael at the top of his lungs. “How about we put the light on?” I screamed back, “Maybe they’ll run away.” After a few moments reflection we determined that while this was a stellar idea, it presented the thorny problem of how to reach the switch, located impossibly far away across a rat strewn floor. Grisly though it was, I had no intention of leaving the sanctuary of our cocoon and neither apparently had Michael. We discussed strategy for a while, (“you f*****g do it!” “no, YOU f*****g do it!”), before I scored the winning goal by pointing out that Michael was nearest the light switch.
I reasoned that if I held his left arm, he could lean out of the bed and albeit at full stretch, reach the elusive switch. It was hard to argue with the logic, particularly as we couldn’t think of a better idea so after encouraging me to take my responsibilities seriously, namely by promising retribution involving rudimentary surgery on my private parts, Michael screwed his eyes tight shut, clasped my hand in his, stretched out his other arm, and flicked the switch.
The hideous noise generated by an army of rats scurrying for cover was almost enough to make me drop him onto the floor but I manfully kept my side of the bargain and in moments he was back under the linen sheet, shivering in horror and cursing up a storm. It was a long time before the sun gradually illuminated our sanctuary, but the light stayed on, our eyes stayed open and we stayed upright. I’m not entirely sure, but I think it was around that time my hair first started going gray.
Michael moved on the following day and I didn’t see him again until a chance meeting several weeks later. I had business in Berastagi however, and needed to stay one more night. I moved out of that awful room of course and into the clean, modern and rat free dormitory where I slept like a baby. Until about 1am, when I was awoken from my slumber by a distant and muffled scream. “OH….MY….GOOOOOODDDDD!”.
Smiling smugly, I turned over and drifting back to sleep, thought,
“I bet I know which room he’s in.”
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