Critters

Ah, yes... there were critters. To be honest, it wasn't that big of a deal to us. We knew they'd be there. You can freak, or you can get over yourselves. We got over ourselves... at least most of the time. :)

We brought insecticide spray, and so most of the coackroaches we had were not living by the time we found them... but there were those with strong resolve that survived. Some were a good 2 inches long. In the middle of one night, one of them freaked me out by suddenly moving in our trash bag in the bathroom (where all the toilet tissue is discarded)... while I sat on the "commode".

Talk about heebie-geebies. They were the least problematic if you ask me.


Next we highlight the spiders. Ah, the spiders. Let me just say that I am not a fan of them, but I can deal with them. But Anika... she despises them, and even the little American ones freak her out. I knew we'd be seeing some doozies in Liberia, and I even had some of you praying specifically for protection for her from having to deal with that fear. She made it 2 weeks without realizing what was living with us. A blissfull 2 weeks it was. Sometimes, one of us would see one on the wall, turn to Anika and say, "OK... close your eyes," while Jason would knock him down and discard him... but Anika never saw how stinkin' huge they were. But one day, she gasped and squealed a bit, and we knew our happy streak was over. She did so great... but she was NOT happy to discover that the spiders were a bit larger than the palm of Jason's hand... with hairy brown legs. I think you could see their compound eyes from about 5 feet away. I don't think she'll ever complain about Minnesotan spiders again.

We all know about the scorpions. Been there, done that. Saw one, killed it. It's friend came back and exacted revenge on Asher's arm. Case closed.

On to Matilda. Brenda was with us the first week as we settled into life at Daniel Hoover Children's Village. She was with us as we named Matilda the mouse. I decided to call her Matilda... it's a nice kind of name, don't you think? Somehow it made us feel better to think of her as a solo mouse, though we knew she was far from alone. We'd be sitting at the table in the dark after the kids were in bed... and we'd hear this very loud scuttling of tiny little claws on contact paper (what our cement floor was covered with). Running right by us. When we thought to check our bags to see if they'd discovered the few food items we'd brought, sure enough... our trail mix and several other items had little corner holes chewed into them. Drat.

So- we decided to try to kill Matilda(s). Brenda and Jason had a plan... I wanted no part of slamming a mouse with Jason's loafer, but I went to observe. So- picture this... it's dark, we're in the room which holds all of our bags where we KNOW Matilda is hanging out. We're moving the bags one by one so that she'll run and we can smack her dead. So, the next bag is moved... and Matilda takes a detour... right over my foot!!!!!!!! Seriously, I can handle knowing mice are bunking with me... but I don't want to feel those little claws on my flesh. Nasty.

Matilda(s) like peanut butter. We know because we had a HUGE thing of peanut butter to keep for our meals, and one night, even after we made sure the peanut butter container was clean and covered in foil (I wouldn't chew through foil... surely Matilda would draw the line there) Matilda chewed right through it to satisfy her craving. So, Mommy Sieh gave us a plastic bin to put our food into. We covered it all in foil... packed it away and covered it with a folded sheet. Let me just say that all of this was on a table with metal legs. Metal legs which I watched a mouse climb up quite adeptly... vertically... I didn't think mice were supposed to be able to do that. Anyway, Matilda chewed right through a part of the green plastic bin, shimmied under the lid, ate right through the foil and right through the platic peanut butter lid. Yep. Anyway... we used duct tape to secure the lid after that, and Matilda went hungry from then on. Praise the Lord.

Oh, I almost moved on from Matilda... but one more thing to add. Mommy Sieh wanted to set poison out for them, so we did. About a week later, I was convinced something had died in our room. Kelvin finally looked at me and said, "Mama... dead rat in there." Liberians call them rats. I prefer "mouse," as it makes me feel better. Anyway, I knew he was right. We looked everywhere, and then under my mattress ( a hollow boxspring with a thin mattress on top)... sure enough, a dead Matilda. Anika and I had been sleeping on top of a dead Matilda. We knew they were in and out of our room at night to collect mattress stuffing... we could hear them sometimes. But a dead one... again, heebie-geebies. Seeing the true condition of our mattress was almost as bad. No lie.

On one other occasion a few days later, Jason smelled the death-stench of mouse in the boys' and his room. Sure enough... another Matilda dead in the corner. No worries. We were pros by now.

The rest of the critters were just things like mosquitoes, little biting flies, and stuff like that. No strange stories to tell. What... wasn't the above enough for you? Oh, there were lizards too... But I kinda liked them, so they don't count.