So, it all started late one night, in a hotel, in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the jungle, in Sri Lanka….
I am woken up in the middle of the night, by some mysterious noises happening across the room. Me – “Sean! What is that?!” Sean (groggily) – “What?” Me – “THAT! what is that NOISE?!” and I click on the lights. Sean tip toes over to the corner of the room where I think the noise is coming from, moves the huge ceiling to floor curtains, and suddenly he says, “Oh my GAWD! You DON’T want to know what it is. Do NOT come over here”. I am panicking on the inside, true flight or fight mode, thinking the worst, that it’s a snake or a tarantula, I KNOW it! So I am relieved when Sean finally tells me it’s a mouse. Then he says he thinks the mouse is “kind of cute”. I say, “Let’s switch rooms,” instead, we call the front desk to explain the situation and I settle to let someone come to the room to try to chase the “cute” mouse out. The time is now 1:15am.
Poor guy that worked there came to our room in the middle of the night to try to catch the mouse which we figured out was hiding in the huge wooden media console that held the tv. He brought a can of bug spray and tried to catch him in a towel. I hid in the bathroom while Sean and this poor guy (who spoke no English and was about 16 years old) chased the mouse around the room. Finally they “thought” they got him out the patio door so Sean says, “Let’s go back to sleep” (yeah right) So the guy leaves, we go back to bed, and about 15 minutes later, the papers on the media console go flying off and hit the ground and we realize the mouse is not gone at all, and is back with a vengeance, throwing things in the room to get back at us. Now I say, quite firmly, “WE ARE SWITCHING ROOMS. CALL THEM” And while we wait for them to come back and assign us our new room, we discover a second, slightly larger mouse run behind THE BED, so I am sitting on the coffee table in the middle of the room so they don’t get me, and Sean goes over to the bedside table, opens the drawer, and WHOOP! THERE HE IS! Looking up at Sean. So cute.
A bunch of hotel workers show up now, including the manager wearing his pajamas, to help us move our things to another room, and when we settle in the new room (which is right next door so I am worried the angry mice clan will follow us) we hear the guys bumping around next door, moving furniture, furiously trying to catch the little (big) buggers. We called them mice, the workers called them rats, so maybe they were baby rats? I would have felt better thinking they were mice, but whatever, so is life in Sri Lanka in the middle of the jungle….at 2am…
Sean Shadmand 