Ewww!!

So, I’ve really been enjoying the “no shoe” policy I’ve instituted in my room. I just deposit my flip flops at the door (African style) and walk around barefoot on the cool plastic sheet that covers the concrete of my floor. I sweep out the dirt daily and have a relatively clean surface to do yoga or dance around when no one is peering in the windows. So, today I was innocently cleaning up some clothes, and as I was hanging my dress on a hook, I felt something a bit … unfamiliar under my bare foot. I thought to myself, “That’s strange, I don’t think I left any furry clothes right there..” (you see where this is going) I looked down and saw that I was standing, for more time than is ever necessary, directly on a squished dead mouse; and if this is not disgusting enough of a picture for some of you, I should add that a little more blood had just squirted out of its’ furry body from my weight. Now, I can only assume it was already dead because I did not feel it struggling against me and I had just put out rat poison several days prior, but it is still possible that I was more directly responsible for this death. Well, I may seem to be calm about this whole little incident right now, but you should know that I let out the most primal scream after noticing what I was standing on, that my neighbors may have reasonably assumed I was being stabbed.

There is actually a little background to my cohabitation with the mice that you should hear about. A few weeks ago, I woke up in the middle of the night to someone biting my fingertip. You heard me right. Some little creature was nibbling on my middle finger and my very justified “freak out” scared the little bastard away, squeaking as he went. That incident thereby ended my “no mosquito net” policy, which was instituted because of my “need to get some sleep” in the tropical heat policy. I know that sounds brazenly cavalier since I’ve caught malaria twice already, but damn it’s hot at night and malaria can be treated. Mouse bites, however, are intolerably disgusting! So, the mosquito net came down and the rat poison was laid.

So, I guess the score to date is Kim– one fatality, Mice - two casualty incidents (the bite and the trauma of stepping on the dead body. Hey, that counts. Believe me) I’m not sure who is winning at this point. I’ll just file the whole thing under “things I won’t miss about living here.”