We Hate Meeces to Pieces!

We arrived up in Nimba County at the small village of Mia Deah Play in the early afternoon. We handed our frozen chicken and small bag of rice to a local lady, and as we went off to assess children in the area, she went to work on supper. After visiting several children and their care givers, we walked back to the office where we would spend the night. The woman had supper ready, and it was delicious. The four pound chicken, served with rice, fed eighteen people.

Babs was tired. It was only 8:00pm, but it had been a long day, and she headed to bed. We use the term "bed" loosely, as it was a two inch foam mat on the floor. A mosquito net was hanging over the mat. We were thankful for the net, as the one little window had a screen that had seen better days! Obviously, it would not provide much protection from mosquitoes. When Dave came to bed at 10:00pm, our hosts turned off the generator, and the office building, which would sleep seven people in various rooms this night, became very dark and very quiet.

The scritching sound started about five minutes after all the lights went out. And it was loud. The rodent could not be in the walls, as the walls were made of adobe brick. It had to be at our door. We shined the flashlight at the door, and to our dismay, realized that a large mouse (think Mickey) was trying to get out of our room! Dave got up and opened the door a few inches, crawled back to our mat and turned off the flashlight. After a minute or two, Dave got up and closed the door. Mickey was out in the hall. Good enough!

Except, after a few minutes, the scritching re-started! Flashlight on again, pointed it at the door, and there was Minnie trying to get out! Oh, for heavens sake! Dave repeated the open door/close door scenario. Quiet again...for about two minutes. More scritching. Yes, now Mighty Mouse wanted out of the room. Once again, Dave opened and then closed our door. It was quiet for several minutes, and we were now pretty sure that the mouse family was happily roaming the office building, out of our hair!

After an hour's worth of sleep, the scritching noise was back. There were no mice on our side of the door, though. Apparently, the mouse family decided they LIKED it in our room and wanted back in! Not gonna' happen! But it was impossible to sleep with that dreadful scritchy-scratchy sound at the door. It was like a sound track from a bad Stephen King movie! We discovered that if we pointed the flashlight at the bottom of the door, the scritching stopped. And so that is how we finally slept most of the night, with the flashlight on, shining at the teeny crack at the threshold of the door. It was a long night.

The next morning, as we were packing up to leave our deluxe accommodations, we realized that several bags of rice were being stored in a corner of our room. Well, this explains why the mouse entourage wanted to get back in our room. They probably were coming with all their friends to party on! Next visit, we must demand a nicer room...like maybe the copier room.

We are not cat people, but having a nice Tabby along when we visit Mia Deah Play again might be a good idea.

Wishing you a rodent free day.

Dave and Babs

P.S. Since originally writing this blog post, things have come up and we need to return to Nimba County this week. Without a kitty cat. (sigh).