Tales of a SocRATes

In my four weeks as a newbie in Nuku’alofa, my access to wonderful things has made my GAD coordinator initiation quite wonderful. I have internet every day, (except weekends, where I take a break,) a hot shower keeps me feeling clean, I have furniture for watching my newly-acquired shows and movies via Ttap (Tongatapu) friends, and then there’s food.
If I’m feeling ice cream, I go to Chateaux for a double-scoop of boysenberry and passionfruit, or if one is out, banana and strawberry or kiwi and passionfruit. (For some reason, living here has made me crave fruity ice cream…I never got it back home.) If I need a quick bite to eat, I’ll run by this a cheap sit-down place called Talahiva (chicken curry and manioke for $3!) or perhaps barbeque (which they call KENTUCKY) for $5. If I want snacky and delicious things, Molisi has fruits, yogurt, good cereal, healthy crackers, etc. And the American Store has a random and ever-changing stock of stuff you just can’t get anywhere else.
Life is good. The bakery is always open and quite delicious (sausage roll $1.50 what!!!), and I always buy bread from there. It’s so accessible for my ever-changing cravings, like PB&Js, garlic toast, or sadly and of late, plain bread and butter (but not a lot of butter.) Bread is just awesome. It’s easy. Fluffy. Goes with anything.
Like Bleach, for example. I recently found a beautiful bottle of Clorox bleach and figured I should get it since my shower actually has tile in it. Plus I’m slightly anal about cleaning certain things. (Not my bedroom, though…sorry, ‘rents.)
And since discovering there was a little sneak in my house, I knew the Bleach would come in handy someday. Let’s go back a few months to ‘Eua, where Kimberly (AKA: Boo-Boo) sends me a hilarious text about handling her quite terrible rat situation. It says something along the lines of:
“Im crzy- bc the dull machete wont kill these stupid rats, I got the idea to soak my pata (small bananas) in bleach. And feed it to the rats. Im insane. (Next message, after I replied with enthusiasm and amazement) I should be institutionalized.”
Since then, Kimberly has become the rat-killing maestra. Other PCVs have texted her about the details of lacing food with any common rodent killer...like Bleach. She tries to defend her honor and psyche by claiming that these thoughts were only accumulated in desperate need, but I believe much differently. It was divine intervention.
Let’s fast-forward a few months to yesterday. Well, first I’ll preface yesterday. Rats, in my mind, are the “EEEK!” equivalent to the molokau. I walk into a room, scan the floor from crack to crevice, check table tops and chairs, and then breathe out when I realize neither has chosen to visit and scare the Sisu out of me. These things…are scary in a way a scary movie is scary. It’s not, but the anticipation makes you twiddle your thumbs in rapid succession, tap your foot as though the energy will wear it off, and your mind races at possibilities, trying to get the timing of the music just right with the moment when the evil SocRATes jumps out in steroided form, with 12-inch fangs, poisonous whiskers, and a tail with one of those medieval pointy ball things attached.
In all reality, when I saw Socrates for the first time last night, he was tiny. Technically, I don’t know if the word “rat” applies…of course, I use it for dramatic effect, since “rat” makes my whole face cringe, while mouse makes me think of The Rescuers or Feivel Goes West.


Socrates caught my eye under my bedroom table, between my tennis shoes and hiking boots. At first, I thought he was a little dancing shadow, but then I realized that something is to move in order to make a shadow, and nothing in my room was moving. So I studied this subtly-twitching thing, watching him scurry past my shoes and into a pile of clothes I’ve left on my floor all week. I carefully removed an article of clothing at a time, got to the bottom of the pile, and beneath my pink tank top, Socrates made a dash to the corner of my room below my bed, around the wall, and then out the door into the dark living room, where, of course, I didn’t find him. The little sh* must have squeezed between my cardboard-and-tape hole-plugs, or into another mouse escape I couldn’t see.
I immediately went into the kitchen, tore an old slice of bread into chunks, doused it in Clorox, and did the same with some leftover fried apples. This morning, the food was gone.
If I smell dead things in my house soon, I’ll only cringe a little…and part of that cringe will be a sly, successful smile, knowing that now I, too, should be institutionalized due to creative ways of rat poisoning.