1st September

The rat saga continues!

This morning, A was doing work at his desk when he suddenly cried “maggots!”. Sure enough, there were tiny white maggots wriggling across his desk and onto his notebook. Not nice! We poked around and soon discovered that maggots were (are!) falling from a crack in the office ceiling, which is directly under my living room.

So, we’ve come to the conclusion that a rat or mouse had died beneath the floorboards of my living room, and therefore in the roof of our office, and the maggots have come to eat it. There has been a slightly odd smell in the office over the last day or so, but I thought nothing of it (there are a variety of weird smells in my life in Lalibela!). However, I have smelt the stink a dead rat makes a week after dying, so I know there is a lot worse to come!

The only way to get into the place where we think the dead rodent is, is to take apart the ceiling. This is a job A says he can do, but it’s going to be quite a big job which will take a day or so. However, it may be our only option before it gets so stinky in here that we have to work with pegs on our noses ...