At the beginning of November, Rusty noticed something had chewed its way under our back screen door. The little rodent chewed into our whole wheat bread and then chewed through the screen on the other back door. The next night Rusty had taped up the floor sweep, and I thought it was safe to open the front doors since he hadn't been through those yet. I bought new bread, and the little guy came back again and got into the whole wheat bread! This time he used the front door. So we started opening a couple of windows and left the doors closed.
As I was looking out the window I saw the little guy on the front porch. He was very brave! We fixed up the whole wheat bread with a special snack for him and left it on the porch. He ate on it several nights.
It had been raining off and on, and the rat was still visiting us at night! I decided during English class to put the bag of food out for him because we were all laughing about our visitor. I guess I should have taken it more seriously because I slipped and fell as I was coming down the steps.
I'm forty years old, and this was my first ER visit for stitches. When I fell I didn't realize I was bleeding. I sort of sat there stunned trying to figure out if I had actually hurt myself in any way. I decided I felt ok only to realize I was bleeding when my friend started yelling I needed to go to see the doctor. I guess she doesn't like the sight of blood. Rusty got my ear cleaned up, but I asked him to take me just in case. I really thought they would just look at it and send me home.
I ended up with six stitches.
The nurses kept asking me how I hurt myself, and I kept telling my story. I don't think most of them understood my English. One of them finally translated for the others, and they responded, "Oh, that's a common story." Really? How many foreigners come in after busting their ear on a flower pot?
The next day I was on the front porch, and I found broken flower pot pieces on the ground. I found three or four chunks missing from the edge, and I was very thankful it didn't do more damage to my ear. I was also thankful it wasn't my head, eye, or some other body part where it would have caused more damage. Just a few stitches, a few trips to the hospital for cleaning, and some hydrogen peroxide were not too bad!
By the way we finally found the rat in the front flower bed. He wasn't quite dead, but he didn't last long.
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