The worst part was that it wasn't a dream. At all. It was very much a real experience.
Let me tell you about it.
First of all, there are all kinds of creepy crawlies here in Hawaii (cockroaches, centipedes, spiders, etc) so I have developed a very real and intense fear of stepping on something in the middle of the night on the way to the bathroom. It's always been in the back of my mind that this could happen (not to mention I have always hated stepping on live creatures- ex: fish in the ocean, yuck) but since coming to Hawaii, where sometimes I feel like bugs crawl out of everything, it has become a full blown fear. I know, kind of silly. Well, wait until you hear this story.
So Anthony and I were pretty sure we had a little mouse or two in our apartment and had bought some traps to catch the buggers. We have been setting them the last two or three nights but they kept getting licked clean. I know from past experience that mice/rats/rodents in general can be very sneaky when it comes to traps so we were just being patient. We hadn't seen the mouse so we figured it was coming out at night when we were asleep. Two, I repeat, TWO bags of rice had gotten chewed open before we decided it was urgent that we get some traps. So we had the traps set with a peanut butter rice mixture and like I said, they were being LICKED (I mean completely licked) clean. Not being super familiar with rodents and honestly just not thinking much about it we never even considered the pest might be something a little bigger than a mouse.
Anyway, we reset the traps last night and I was heading to bed pretty late (11:30ish) when I thought I heard something. I didn't think much of it because I knew the traps were set and there was really nothing more I could do about it. I just prayed they wouldn't find a way into our bed. That's a whole new level of fear for me. Anyway, I went to bed and around 3 am I got up to use the restroom. Here is where that fear I mentioned above became a startling and terrifying reality. So I get up, walk out of our room towards the bathroom and my foot brushes/hits something. Something that should not be in the middle of the floor. Immediately I feel little nails/claws all over my foot. Well, you can probably guess what happens next. I obviously scream bloody murder. I did not care what time it was, there was a furry something running all over my feet. Not ok. I then flipped the bathroom light on and continued to scream louder than I have ever screamed before. There was a GIANT rat/mongoose/rodent (I wasn't sure what it was at the time because I was still half asleep and completely terrified and they have had mongoose problems in TVA) JUMPING and scurrying around the floor between the kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom. I jumped up on the toilet while screaming and trying to get some words out. Poor Anthony is sitting straight up in bed thinking there is another person in our house attacking me. I somehow get the words "rat", "jumping", and "help" out of my mouth and slam the bathroom door shut- leaving Anthony and the rat on the other side. hahahaha. I am laughing now as I write this, but trust me, it was one of those moments where your heart stops but beats really fast all at the same time and all you can do is scream. It was scary. So there I was, screaming, crying, and yelling for Anthony, all while standing on the toilet with the bathroom door shut. Now Anthony was on the other side of that door thinking "I am not getting out of this bed until she opens the door and sheds some light on the hallway so I don't step on it!" hahaha and I was thinking "I am NOT opening this door until Anthony does something about that rat!" ha! Finally I opened the door only to see the rat STILL JUMPING and trying to figure out exactly what happened! Naturally, I slam the door shut again. haha! Anthony finally convinces me to open the door and I do right as the rat runs into the kitchen/living room and disappears! Now that Anthony can see, he is being paranoid about seeing the rat (I find out at this time that he has a pretty serious hatred and fear of rats). He heads out to the living room, jumps on the couch and announces he cannot see it anywhere. He has no clue where it has gone. I start to relax just a little as I watch Anthony look around (with a machete in hand I might add) searching for where the rat could have gone, both of us were thinking it had run back to its secret "safe" hiding spot. Then all of a sudden I see out of the corner of my eye and hear the stupid thing run BACK into the bathroom where I am still stranded standing on the toilet. Again, I start to scream the same "I can't escape" kind of scream. Anthony got spooked and jumped up on a chair as I was trying to tell him between sobs and screams that the rat had crawled onto the lower half of the toilet and that I could see it's tail and that he needed to come get it before it got me. Just as I looked down, it lifted this little metal cover that covers the piping from the toilet and proceeded to crawl through a hole in the wall. I didn't hesitate a second to jump and run to the bed. I was careful to kneel on the bed with my contaminated legs hanging off though. Anthony made his way to the bathroom and back to the room while announcing that the rat was probably scared to death and not going to come back out for awhile. After a very emotional conversation about how the rat was scratching at my feet and legs Anthony talked me into building up the courage to go back in the bathroom and wash my legs off with soap. I knew I had no choice, I was more scared of the nasty diseases that thing might be carrying than I was of running back into the bathroom. After I cleaned up and made it back to bed we stayed up and waited for the rat to come back for quite awhile before I fell asleep. Anthony didn't ever go back to sleep and even went to another building to use the toilet, hahaha!!!
We woke up this morning and got rat traps to set while we are out all day. I really really hope it gets caught. Oh, also, my friend who lives below us with her husband texted me around 4 am to make sure everything was ok because she heard me screaming. I felt so bad for waking people up!! AND we went to put in a maintenance order to get the two holes in our wall fixed and our buildings RA was working. He said he got a text message about someone screaming at 3 am...oops. Our neighbors were all worried and I seriously felt like a big weenie. But it really was so frightening. That rat was a big boy. They are supposed to fix the holes today so we will see what happens. I don't know what I am going to do tonight when I have to go to the bathroom though......
Hopefully we come home to a nice, dead rat. hahaha! gross, I know. Hopefully you guys enjoyed reading this story more than I enjoyed living it ;)
Love you all!! Can't wait to see my San Diegans in 17 days! :)
