The Self-Consuming Easy Chair

 Some weeks ago, I was sitting at home in my easy chair when I seemed to hear a chewing sound from somewhere behind me. I thought at first that it was just something in my head. My ears do funny things sometimes, and their acuity for hearing at all is nothing to be bragged about these days. Nonetheless, the sound persisted off and on, and seemed, of all things, to be coming from the chair itself. Impossible, I thought. So I pressed my ear to the back of the chair to be certain, and there it was again, only louder. A chewing noise. Definitely, with no longer a doubt, there was something inside the chair, chewing. 

I puzzled over what this could be and arrived at the conclusion that some sort of large bug must have entered from the bottom of the chair and was now feasting on the stuffings. A beetle, perhaps, or one of these other whatchamacallits that we have here in Bali. I have in fact seen beetle-like creatures about the size of a doorknob in the past. 

So I turned the chair over and aimed a cannister of Baygon mosquito and cockroach killer into the open places where the wooden legs enter the chair. The chewing noise stopped, and the chair remained silent for some days to come. 

Next, however, I began to notice little bits of chair innards on the floor.  You know, this foam rubber sort of stuff. I would sweep them up, and they would reappear the next day, like the crumbs from someone's table. 

I sprayed the chair again. 

The crumbs continued to appear. 

Oh well, I thought, whatever this is cannot live forever on foam rubber crumbs. 

Then two things happened. The first was that when I was just awakening one morning, I had the impression that something had touched my face. I waved a hand at it automatically, as one batting a fly, and had the distinct impression that something then jumped to the end of the bed and thence to the floor. But as I've said, I was just between sleeping an waking. Maybe this was part of a dream. 

The second thing that happened was that when one of the neighborhood dogs came into the house later that day, she seemed immediately set toward hunting something--keenly aware, tail up, nose up, ears up, poking into this corner and that. 

And I thought, Could this be a mouse? Or a rat? Or rather, I thought, Oh my God, could this be a rat? A rat in my chair? The chair where I sit everyday? 

No. I returned to the idea of the large bug, if only for self-comfort. I turned the chair over again. I sprayed. I gave it a few good kicks. 

To be on the safe side, however, I bought a sticky mousetrap. You know, these cardboard things that open like a book and have some sort of superglue on the inside. I placed a little cookie in the middle of the trap, slid it under the easy chair, and then went about my day--inside for part of the day, outside for part--and the trap remained untouched every time I checked. 

I went to bed and slept like the dead, and when I awoke and made breakfast and planted myself in the chair, I did not even remember the trap until the middle of the morning newscast. 

The first thing I saw upon peering under the chair was a long tail snaking over the near edge of the trap. Yes, this was a rat. And not only a rat, but two rats. And I mean rats! Not mice. Each the size of my hand, not including the tail, lying side by side in the imprisoning glue. 

I had been sitting in my easy chair with two rats for weeks on end. No wonder I had never seen a rat, nor had the maid seen a rat, even with thoroughly cleaning two days a week in every corner. They had been cozily huddled within my chair all the while, except at night when they surely must have come out to seek food and, for some reason, jump on my bed. 

Now I have posttraumatic stress disorder. I imagine rats wherever I go. In the chair, in the bedcovers, under the bed, inside the pillows. Every night I put out a trap, but as yet have captured no additional creatures. 

And by the way, where in the world did these rats come from anyway? There are no holes in the walls, no holes in the floors, no open pipes or drains. So how did they get in to begin with? Or have they been in the chair since I moved from Renon a couple years ago? Heaven forbid! Did they just walk in the front door as I was watching TV and creep between my feet? How can it be? 

Every time I sit down now, I wonder if I am sitting on rats. Or  how many rats I'm sitting on. I close the doors, I close the windows, I draw the curtains. And I watch.