Flushed Away

My mornings (when I’m working) are usually similar to one another.

I wake up at about 8.15 while trying to ignore the fact that my alarm has already went off because I always believe in stealing a few extra minutes of sleep. Then it’s some quality eye-rubbing time before I pick up my toothbrush and squeeze some of that delicious toothpaste on it.

Unlocking my side of the bathroom door and stepping into the small tiled bathroom I share with HS, the first thing I do is look around with bleary eyes at the bright morning sun and the pristine, squeaky, just-cleaned...holy COW (or rat).

I saw another pair of bleary eyes staring back at me from inside the toilet bowl. It was bedraggled, dark grey and (quite cute actually) with its front paws resting on the walls of the bowl as high as it could reach standing on it’s hind legs. Half of its body was in the water and the other, obviously trying in vain to scrabble up the smooth sides of the porcelain bowl.

I lifted my eyebrows at it and proceeded to calmly walk back into my room and close the bathroom door. Walking over to HS’s room using the hall outside, I knocked and told him, “The rat that you said you heard walking about on the whatchamacallits outside has fallen from grace and landed in our toilet bowl.”

Oh, goody (or bloody, whichever you see it to be).

Well, good old HS tries to get rid of our pest. I suggested picking it up and disposing of it (okay, I’ll admit it. my actual suggestion was give it to the kitties outside the apartment).

Before you know it, the idiotic creature burrows DEEPER into the water and disappears (into the S-tube where else?).

I’m at a lost and so is HS. Quite frankly, I’ve only dealt with cockroaches, squirrels, a snake (or rather heard of it being dealt with in my old rented house) and lizards. Rats present a whole new horizon to me.

“Let’s flush it.”

It was, after all, the size of two fat pieces of durians stuck together in its pod. It’s probably malleable too. If it’s lucky, it might be the next assistant chief chef at ‘Batu Keras’ Cafe in the next couple of weeks.