MY Story: I met a student/friend last night about 7pm and we hopped on her motorcycle and sped downtown to enjoy some special Hanoi food. It has been terribly hot here and I was happy to get out my room and try a new restaurant. We had a great meal and then putt-putt-putted around the old portions of the city enjoying the sights. We arrived back on campus about 9:30pm and we both said…hmmmm, pretty dark. Sure enough, the power was out. I was not happy because it was so damn hot out and a night with no AC didn’t seem enticing. But suddenly the power was back on and I was smiling and headed off to my room.
Not sure why, but when the power goes out for awhile the creepy, crawly things come out of the woodwork! I have had no “bug” problems in my room because I keep my food locked up pretty well. Well…last night it seemed like the cockroaches had decided my room was the place to be! I chased them around the room and tried to nail a couple of them….but no luck.
I did bring some of those “sticky traps” from home and had a few of them out and hoped that these might help catch the roaches. They are the little cardboard sheets with sticky glue on them. The bugs step on them and basically….are stuck! Anyway, cockroaches are gross…but they really don’t bother me. I went to bed.
Fast forward to about midnight. I woke up pretty hot --the power was out again. I realized that this was probably one of their “controlled outages” where they shut down power in off-peak times. So I knew it was going to be a long night. I fell back asleep and woke again about 2:30pm. I walked outside and it was pretty cool…a strong breeze and lightening on the horizon. It was going to rain soon. Opening my front and back windows created a wonderful breeze through the room. Hmmmmmmmm. The only problem is that there are no screens….no nothing except some strong bars to keep the room secure. Well, I was really hot…sweat was running down my brow. I decided to keep the windows open. The photo below shows what my windows are like.
I fired up my computer and did some email using the G3 USB which is like a cell phone connected to my computer. I chatted with hubby Phil for a few minutes…but the bugs were attracted to my computer screen since my computer screen was the only light on for miles! I finally shut things down about 4am and tried to get back to sleep. The rain was pouring outside….the humidity was super high…and I was mighty uncomfortable. But about 5am I finally fell back asleep with my earplugs in because people were starting to stir outside and were making lots of noise.
At about 7am I launched out of bed. SOMETHING was wrong. I ripped out my ear plugs to hear this massive THRASHING next to my refrigerator. What the heck……..
I got up and carefully peaked around the refrigerator…….oh shi$....... I had caught a frigging huge RAT on my sticky trap and he was not a happy camper. The beast had climbed in my open window and was enjoying a romp around my room. Unfortunately he stepped on the sticky cardboard. So what the heck do I do? How do you “catch” a rat and extract it from your room? Damn……a new experience.
Well….to make a long story short, I tried several things (dish pan…..bucket…..etc). Nothing really worked except it was pissing off the rat. I finally gave up and decided to wait until the staff of the dorm showed up. I heard some thrashing…and finally silence. I looked and the rat was gone and the cardboard was there. But gone where? The stupid thing was still in my room! I was sitting on my bed……assessing my options when suddenly it appeared and proceeded to climb up the TV cable that snakes into my room from the ceiling. It waltzed up the cable (see below) and slithered through the hole that the cable comes in and disappeared from sight.
I talked to dorm people and they sent a guy in to look for more critters and to try to plug the holes....here he is doing his job.
PHEW…..
So…I learned to NEVER….NEVER….NEVER…. open my windows. Now I just hope the power outages are few and far between.
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