The visitor and the toilet

Monday morning, 7:30am, I stumble towards the bathroom switching on the lights and the music on my laptop for a little sound privacy.  Upon reaching the bathroom, I glance blurrily into the black toilet bowl…where it seems to me something isn’t quite right. Now due to the color of the porcelain, and my state of mind it was somewhat difficult to see what was there so I leaned forward.  Upon a closer examination I realized whatever it was seemed to have fur and was definitely alive as it began attempting to climb out.  This is about the point when I realized I had a rat in my toilet.  Now I have heard urban legends about things like this, but never in my life did I expect to find a furry visitor in the toilet… thank God I didn’t sit down.  I’m slightly embarrassed to say I tried flushing the toilet in an attempt to make the problem disappear without really having to solve it.  However, the poor rat only went round and round swimming and struggling, but definitely not going down… or course this only made me feel horribly guilty for making him needlessly suffer, not to mention what would have befallen him if he had actually gone back down into a pipe somewhere.

So, I watched him little longer to make sure he wasn’t going anywhere, as I had no desire to have a wet rat running around my apartment, then I got dressed and found Maladies, the girl who manages the house.  Maladies shrieked an “Ay díos mio!” and offered to get Jorge, the man who is fixing the other bathroom, but I was afraid he would want to kill it, and feeling pity for the poor thing half drown and struggling, I couldn’t allow it. So I asked for a broom and a bucket and with a little difficulty, shrieks from Maladies over my shoulder, and squeaks from the rat, I took him outside and put him in a spot where I figured he would have time to recover without being exterminated by a passerby. Needless to say for me, it was quite a way to start the week… although… I imagine popping up in someone’s toilet is not a swell way to set out on the right foot either. 

Cuba is full of unusual problems and so spontaneous solutions are the state of life here.  From what I have seen it makes the average Cuban quite inventive.