My wife calls a a mouse a rat. You've heard that before, right? And a rat is the size of a cat. I have endured her horror for many years and invariably the rat is a mouse--a tiny thing you could enclose in one hand. She is a strong woman who is invariably turned to a trembling heap of mush by the sight of a single dropping--and, should she see the offending creature--then all hell breaks loose. I am usually the guy caught in the trap.
It's hard to understand women. We have lived in Africa all our lives and we spent five years in snake country: Zululand. Along with Mocambique, Zululand is snake haven. Forget the rain forest--it is here that the spitting cobra lives, the tree snake and the mamba along with venomous forest cobras and Gaboon adders. When my youngest child was a crawler, we had to be careful that he was watched in our garden at all times. We, regretfully, had to kill the odd spitting cobra who slithered near.
One day I found my wife brandishing a rake at a female green mamba in an avocado tree close to the kitchen. She chased mother mamba high up into the branches and that was that. Snakes were a threat to her children and motherly instinct took over.
Now a mouse, that's another matter. Father has to take care of those. And, as I said , they are often tiny intruders who are labelled as rats. Traps are employed, sticky glue and poison too. I sometimes wonder why she doesn't look for that garden rake!