All the Animals Have Gone Crazy

Apologies first:  I am reprehensibly late in my updates, and I hope I may be forgiven when I state that I have quite an arsenal of them in storage. 


To further encourage your swift pardon, I will share first with you what is most likely to elicit your pity also (devious, am I not?).


The Plateau being a rural province, it is only natural that the animal population far exceeds the people.  Animal husbandry is one of the chief means of survival, so we are surrounded by the usual goats, sheep, donkeys, pigs, and chickens.  The last in that list have made themselves particularly odious to me.  They are noisy, dirty, stupid, and destructive.  I have utterly given up trying to plant anything in the yard with them around...they will either scratch it up or eat it up.  My grandmother made an obvious attempt to ruffle my feathers (yes, pun intended...sneer if you like) by sending me a poem enumerating the laudable qualities of chickens above all other pets.  However, I am convinced that the author was merely trying to get rid of all his, and so wrote such an advertisement.


Before I move on, I must also decry the incomprehensible decision made to tell children that the donkey says "hee haw."  The syllables themselves may be correct, but they are pronounced in such a mild manner.  Let me personally testify that donkeys make one of the worst noises in the animal kingdom.  That's why it's called "braying," I suppose; the word itself sounds obnoxious.

Not only are domestic animals quite prolific, but so are the less desirable ones.  A great deal of time and energy is spent in daily (I'm sorry, did you catch the DAILY part?) combating mice, rats, ants, flies, cockroaches, and other unsavory critters.  


Here is an example of one rather singular day (although by no means completely unusual).  I woke early at the sound of something rustling around in the thatch roof above my room.  Perhaps it was just a bird, but it didn't make the usual "bird-rustling" sound.  So, I shrugged it off, and went to the house to help Judy with breakfast.   We groaned at our all-too-usual discovery that there had been mouse visits during the night.  As I lifted things out of the sink to prepare to wash the dishes, I was startled by a rather large millipede.  For those of you who always got centipedes and millipedes confused in school, here is its likeness:

Why this ridiculous person is holding it, I have no idea, as they can bite rather painfully.  It must have crawled up the drain.  After several unsuccessful attempts to kill it with the fly swatter, it was deployed to a better life by the bottom of an empty container.


Breakfast finished, I began work in my office, only to be irritated to distraction by the sound of an unhappy chicken outside my window.  I went out to investigate.  The noises were coming from within a large box attached to the side of the house to hold the inverter batteries.  Knowing that the chickens have a habit of laying eggs in there, I stuck my head at the space between the door and the roof to see what was going on.  Without warning, a chicken flew out with one of its horrendous chicken shrieks, smacked me in the face, and knocked me on the ground!


Soon after I returned to my office, Judy came running in in a panic.  There was a live rat in her closet, being held at bay by Madame Obert (who works in the house).  I grabbed a broom and stood outside the closet.  Madame Tiferne (who cooks lunch for us) joined us with sandal ready in hand.  Judy stood outside the closed door with a broom, in case the rat tried to escape that way.  Needless to say, there was a gorgeous row of banging brooms and sandals and shrieks before the rat finally met his demise.


It was then time to go out to the depot and go over the day's food purchases in the market with Mme Tiferne.  What should I discover there amidst the manioc?  A mouse with its head apparently bitten off.  Who knows.


One would hope that the days adventures would mercifully come to an end at this point, but it wasn't over yet.  We almost perpetually are setting mouse traps, which usually do their job.  For some reason, on this same day, in the afternoon, not one, but TWO mice were caught in the trap by the foot (separate traps, separate times).  This, of course, means that the job must be finished by one's sandal, and I was the only person available at the time to do it.  By that I mean, that when I applied to two young men walking by, they jumped out of the way a safe distance (this is in no way representative of all young men...I believe they were rather startled, and may have obliged me had I implored them).


My mother, once I had related the days events to her in an e-mail, indulged her humor by copying this photo into her response:

I hope this is photo-shopped, for the alternative is that someone collected a bunch of dead mice and strategically placed them.


Happily, that was the last of it.