Aussie in the Orient

Last Thursday night, while driving home from work across the Harbour Bridge, a BLOODY GREAT BIG RAT scurried across the road in front of me. It's little beady eyes lit up in the glare of my headlights as it navigated 6 lanes of traffic. I had just been thinking about the number of cockroaches I would soon be disturbing in the deepest recesses of my kitchen cupboards when I pack up the kitchen this weekend. Then suddenly I am faced with vermin.

I have seen plenty of rats in Sydney. I suppose they are attracted by the nice weather and beautiful beaches. And when you're a rat, rent is not the issue it is for the rest of us Sydney-siders. But up until now I have never seen one so bold as to cross the Bridge.

On the bright side, compared with that, how bad could my kitchen cupboards be...

Well, mum and Liz came over today to help me pack the flat up. We started in the kitchen and I soon realised a few of the food packages had little holes in them. And then noticed that a pack of biscuits had a golfball-sized crater carved out of it.

Mum and I looked at each other knowingly.
"That's not from moths..." I said backing away from the head-height cupboard. Mum, on the other hand leans in closer, pointing out a mouse dropping before squealing in horror at something I knew instinctively to be a mouse.

In what can only be described as a "Save Yourself" manoeuver, I threw Liz bodily out of my path, and screamed like a girl as I ran out of the kitchen to the furthest corner of the house.

At some point in the past couple of weeks, I must have opened the cupboard mid-mouse banquet, and while reaching for dinner had unwittingly squashed the mouse between two tins of food (or something... I refused to look closer), and mum couldn't even shake its decomposing body off the tin. I don't know why she was even trying, especially with me screaming maniacally from the other room: "Throw it in the bin! Just throw the whole lot in the bin!!" before heaving into the toilet.

Cockroaches I can do. Spiders and snakes, done. But mice and rats: not my gig.

So China, bring on your best. After all, I've lived in Sydney, how bad can it be?

PS. Many thanks to Mum and Liz for dealing with the vermin invasion.