You know the ones I mean. The guest that turns up unexpectedly and unannounced. They charge into your lovely quiet life in a whirl of noise and chaos. They decide that they will stay indefinitely. They eat you out of house and home. They make you scream and cower in the corner, sobbing. You want to love them and welcome them but when they keep jumping out on you, moving incredibly fast, eating your food, making a mess, fraying your nerves, it can become more than challenging to love them.
My guest arrived at 7am! Yes, that's right, 7 in the MORNING! Who does that? Who shows up at 7am? Not only that, they didn't even knock! Oh no, they just scampered their way straight up to my bedroom where the Raving Rev and I were deep in slumber. Did they wake me up gently, with a cup of tea? No they did not. They woke me up with such a fright I'm amazed I didn't have a heart attack.
I was deep in the land of dreams, enjoying an adventure, when I became aware of a noise. An unnerving, sets your teeth on edge kind of noise. I was rapidly pulled out of sleep and I was aware that something was in the room with us, something that should not have been there. I sat bolt up right, heart thundering in my chest (and ears) and strained to listen. It was coming from the bottom of the bed. I strained my eyes to see in the gloom. It wasn't the dog, he was snoring in his bed. What was it? In my sleep addled state my brain quickly worked out what it was. There was a giant, hairy, six foot rat at the bottom of the bed, chewing our shoes and getting ready to snack on us. I nearly screamed in fear but managed to contain it for fear of letting the beast know that I was awake. I shook the Raving Rev awake. As he stirred moaning I hissed at him "Ssshhhh......listen." Hearing the panic in my voice the Raving Rev instantly turned to a statue (I've never seen anyone go as still as he did) and he listened. "What is it?" I whisper. I already know that it's a six foot rat but I'm praying that I may, on this one occasion, be wrong. "Sssshh" he replies. I can stand it no longer. The darkness, the weird gnawing noise, the snoring dog (oh yes, through this whole terror the dog slept, completely unaware) I turn on the bedside light. "Aaaaargh" screams the Raving Rev. "WHAT?" I scream in response. Obviously the six foot rat is about to attack and the Raving Rev is screaming in fear and I'm about to join him. "You've blinded me turning on the stupid light" he grumbles. The noise stopped for a moment. I looked. The six foot rat had disappeared. "What is it?" I whisper. "It's a mouse, go back to sleep" mutters the Raving Rev. A mouse! In the bedroom, chewing at our stuff and he wants me to go back to sleep? Is the man stupid? "It's not even two feet away from the dog and he hasn't even woken up. He's not doing his job" I moan. "Sitting on you" replied the Raving Rev. It was at this point that all hell broke loose in the bedroom. You see, the Raving Rev meant that the dog's job is to sit on me and cuddle me. What I heard was this.
"Sitting on you" which translated as "Red, the rat is sitting on you. It's demonic red eyes are staring at you and it's baring its teeth. It is about to leap up and take a bite of you and then try to devour you." Well obviously I'm not just going to sit still and let this happen. I leap up into a crouch and start to crawl out from under the bed covers, but wait.....that exposes more flesh for the rat to bite. I grab the covers and start to slink under them whilst trying to crawl across the Raving Rev and get out of his side of the bed. I figure if I can grab the dog and outrun the Rev, I've got a chance. All the while I'm making shrill little noises of confusion and fear. As I scrabble across the bed trying to keep the covers over my head I hear "I MEANT THE DOG! His job is to sit on you. Will you stop trying to push me behind you?" Ah. Ahem. I look sheepishly at the Rev. He pushes me back onto my side of the bed. "Go to sleep" he commands. "Um...could you at least open the bedroom door so that the rat can escape the bedroom please?" I whine. He huffs and corrects me. "It's a mouse not a rat". I'm not sure how he could be certain as he hadn't seen it but at 7am, I'm not going to argue with him. I'll just be standing there all smug when the rat is chewing his arm off.
With the bedroom door open and the light off we settle down but the rodent starts again! How am I supposed to sleep through this racket? I poke the Raving Rev. He huffs and stomps out of bed. He grabbed his rucksack at the bottom of the bed and marched out of the room with it. He came back a few minutes later. "I think it was trapped in my rucksack so I've put it outside". The noise stopped. It had indeed been trapped in his rucksack. I settled down, calmer and also happy that my man had released the rat/mouse back out into nature. WRONG. I later found out that morning that the Raving Rev had not put the rucksack out into the garden to release the mouse. No, he had put the rucksack out on the landing, thus releasing the mouse into house. Great.
Since then our guest has popped out on us making us both scream. The best one was it ran across the floor in the front room when the Raving Rev was watching tv. It made the Rev jump and then bolted behind the tv. Now the Raving Rev was very brave and stalked over to the tv. He peered behind the set and screamed. Not a deep manly grunt but a high pitched, very girly, hands waving in the air kind of scream. He was very bravely screaming at my toy brown alpaca. It had fallen behind the tv and the Rev thought that it was a rat. I would like to argue here that it was a rat, the same six foot rat that was at the bottom of the bed but the Rev points out that it wasn't six foot high. I must say, it inspires confidence in me to know that when there is a threat my husband will scream like a girl and cower in the corner. I feel safe and protected, ahem.
The mouse has been eating the cheese we've putting out to bait it. It is a mastermind, it can avoid traps. Yes, I know, traps are horrible and I hate using them but I'm sorry, when my guest won't take the hint that it's time to leave serious action needs to be taken.
So, we still have our guest. They have learnt to be more quiet and have only taken to making us scream like girls at least once a week. I'm praying that they'll soon decide to go and live with someone else for a while. Mind you, I'm not sure who else would make a six foot, red-eyed rat that will eat you welcome...........
