Six km past Arcos de la Frontera, October 31, 2007 “Kssjjjjj!!!!”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m chasing an animal out of the tent. Didn’t you hear that?”
“What?”
“Krr krr… Just like a guinee pig chewing grass. Or a rabbit. Or a rat I guess!That day we bike away from a river valley, into rolling grain fields. Every 20 meters there`s a dead rats on the road. If there are so many dead ones, these fields must be full of them. And indeed, when Antoine walks only two meters off the road he finds me screaming, looking around whether there is any chair around to climb on to. Antoine obviously shocked the entire rat community by entering their territory. Tens are running around like crazy. I cannot go anywhere, since I'm holding up two loaded bikes. Strange how I first react, they actually are not so different from rabbits or guinnea pigs. But oh that tale.
Two days later, right at dusk, we find a place to pitch our tent in a field. It is a good distance away from the road so we are practically invisible. Our main concern is a hunter, who keeps shooting way past sunset. Our bikes are locked to a pipe close to some big bushes. To increase the chance for a fast departure in the morning, we leave our bags on the bikes. While getting our bed ready, Antoine gets curious about the noise from the bushes; it sounds like a campfire. I am cooking our dinner away from tent and bushes, dressed in my bright red wind jacket to make sure that the hunter doesn`t think we`re a hurd of deer. I`m not worried about the bushes. Probably some birds. Antoine checks it out, but there is really no fire in the bushes. It’s Halloween.
Only once that night we have to chase something out of our tent. Flop, I hear it ducking under the edge of the flysheet.
The next morning we see what made noise in the bushes. Rats are staring at us from the branches, meters up from the ground. When they run around their tales follow seconds later it seems. This is the kind of thing you know when camping, but it’s really not necessary to see. Luckily they hardly bothered us during the night. We think.
As we are packing up, we come across several holes in Antoine’s front pannier, some two inches across. A waterbottle is ruined and my Teva sandal has some marks. Probably this one wasn’t tasty. We take it as is and decide never to camp right next to moving bushes anymore. The rats did not touch our bag with trash which we left over night in the middle of the field, so even ten meters can make a difference. For now, we’ll find some ducttape to fix the bag.
While biking the first kilometers today, I have a hard time facing the broken waterbottle on Antoine’s bike. In my mind I see the rats crawling all over our bikes, over the handle bars I’m holding now and over the waterbottle that I’m drinking from now. It takes several hours for me to get over it, but I manage. After all they are just like guinea pigs.
0 Reactions to: “Halloween Rat Attack”