I have a fear. I have always had it and I really don’t know where it manifested itself, but it is there none the less. I am terrified that some evening I will come home alone to an empty, dark home with a burglar or villain of some sort waiting inside. I know it is not something that I need to dwell on, so I just try to leave a lamp on if I am going out. Silly, I know, but we all have our quirks.
For a year in college, my brother and I shared a duplex apartment. It was a nice little place (much larger than my current apartment). One night, I came home from a date with Jonathan and Chris wasn’t home yet. So, I unlocked the door and headed in. As I walked across the living room to my bedroom, I heard noise and bumping around in the bathroom beside my room. I scurried in my room, quietly locked myself in, and froze. I listened as seconds passed and then more bumping around–like someone standing in the tub with shoes on. I crawled terrified onto my bed and tried to calm down.
“I’m imagining things,” I thought.
Soon, more sounds came from next door and I knew I needed help. I knew I had to be overreacting, so I called Jonathan.
“Jonathan,” I said to the voice on the other end, “I think someone might be in the house with me…can you come over?”
He got here really fast and knocked lightly on my bedroom door.
“Who is it?”
“It is me!”
I opened the door tenatively and pulled him in. I closed the door behind him and made him stand very still and listen. Sure enough. The sounds were still there. He opened the door and turned the corner. I stood at my bedroom door waiting for him to tell me nothing was there.
Suddenly, he shouted! “Whoa!”, he said and turned back to me grinning.
“Stop it!!! That’s not funny!”, I told him.
“I’m serious,” he said, “there is a huge rat in there.”
He slammed the door and I began twitching all over. You know that heeby-jeeby feeling you get when something you don’t care to come in contact with is nearby. I decided to call the landlord.
When I told him there was a rat in the bathroom, he just sort of sat there before saying, “Did you need me to do something about it?”
Um, yeah!! He came over soon and came in carrying a broom handle. This was quite a sight. He walked into the bathroom shouted and hurried back out and closed the door behind him. He asked for a box and some paper towels. He went back in and closed the door behind him. I thought the walls might fall. He was obviously chasing that thing all over the tiny room. Finally, he emerged and pointed at the rat in a gesture that sounded in my mind like “there’s your problem”.
Let me just tell you it was huge! It had a tail that was around a foot long, if you can imagine. Not a cute rat either. Nope, it was an ugly (now messy) thing. He mopped the bathroom up and headed home promising a visit from the critter people the next day. They came and showed how an inch gap in drywall at the sink pipe had to be the entrance.
For a week, I could not shower or go to the bathroom alone. Seriously! My brother had to sit outside the door and talk to me every once in a while to show me he was still there. It was very traumatic! I feel I have healed from this experience, but I still bear a few scars that make me a little quirky (not that I needed much help).
I was visiting with some gals this weekend and conversation turned to snake experiences, and I shared about a snake that visited our apartment this summer. I told about the way our cat had it pinned under some furniture (I was unaware of what she was watching) until I moved something under thefurniture and out it slithered. Denyse asked what we did with it and I told her that Jonathan banged its head with a shoe and flushed it. She laughed and said that should be a blog post. I knew I didn’t remember many details about the exerience, but it brought to my mind this VERY memorable experience.
