A few nights ago, the Barillas had quite an interesting visitor in their yard. When the kids told me about it at school, they had me guess what the visitor was. I first guessed a scorpion, but they told me it was worse than a scorpion. So, then I guessed a snake. They told me the visitor was even worse than a snake! I couldn’t think of anything worse. So, one of the kids pulled out a book on African wildlife to show me a picture. My mind raced to all kinds of possibilities—was it some sort of wildcat or monkey? Well, the picture the kids turned to was of a giant pouched rat. That’s right—a giant rat!! The night before, the Barillas’ dogs had cornered and killed this giant rat. The rat was about a foot long, with a tail just as long! I’m so glad I didn’t see that one.
Tonight, we went over to the Loeschers’ to watch The Hobbit. Walter had purchased it and worked on downloading it this week. Finally, after about three days of downloading, the movie was ready for viewing. We all settled in to enjoy the film. I made it through about 2 hours of the movie before I started getting a headache. Once I have a headache, watching a movie in a dark room is not the best idea unless I want a full-blown migraine. I decided, instead, to head to a spare room and lay down.
I was nearly asleep when I heard a pitter-patter of small feet scurry across the floor. Naturally, my mind flashed to the incident at the Barillas. All I could think about was that a rat was in the room with me. I looked down at the end of the bed where my feet lay, and I spotted a gray furry creature on the bed next to me. I did the only natural thing to do in such a situation and screamed. Then, I realized that the animal was not a rat but was simply the Loeschers’ cat. I was relieved beyond words but felt foolish for having screamed. In this case, I was very thankful that no one came running to my rescue.
