Humor: Rats, we’re not alone in paradise

Rats, we’re not alone in paradise

If you knew you were going to be stranded on an isolated, tropical island, what would you take with you?

A good book? Fine food? Camping equipment?

Well, we gathered all that - and much more - in preparation for a four-day getaway over Easter at a place called Ant Atoll in the northern Pacific.
But we forgot to take one important thing: a kind and sensitive rat exterminator who appreciated romance.

You see, the trip was meant to be a romantic interlude with my soulmate Katherine. The idea in theory was wonderful: no other people, no noise, not even a chocolate egg - just the two of us alone on a little plot of paradise amid sparkling seas a long way from anywhere.

We left our base on a boat about lunchtime on Good Friday and we were deposited on our perfect little island some hours later. It was no bigger than a football field, lush with coconut trees and other tropical vegetation, with gentle waves lapping at a clean white beach, and no other occupants - or so we thought.

Our friends on the boat, which would return to pick us up on Easter Monday, helped us carry the gear ashore, wading across the shallow reef. We had an eskie full of fine food and drink, fresh water, camping equipment, billies, pots and pans, clothes, a first-aid kit, snorkelling masks, insect repellent, mosquito coils, matches, lighter, cameras, a pack of cards, a backgammon set, books and enough sunscreen to block the sun from parts of our bodies the sun had never been allowed access to before.

We did not, however, have a rat exterminator. And nobody had bothered to tell us that this place was nicknamed Rat Island. We had no idea that, even as we landed, we were being eyed-off by hundreds of beedy little rat eyes. I saw the first rodent while I was struggling to put up the tent in a clearing under the coconut trees. He/she was no more than five metres away in the undergrowth. I didn’t say anything. I thought that he/she would just go away. I was wrong.

As darkness fell, and we sat by the fire eating, we realised that we had dozens of unwanted dinner guests scurrying around in the shadows. Every now and then, one would scamper almost right up to the camp in the hope of picking up a crumb.

This was not the romantic setting we had in mind.

"I think we should sleep out on the beach,’’ I suggested to Katherine meekly. "The rats won’t bother us there.’’

Wrong! We spent the next two nights in fitful sleep, armed with sticks to beat the bold critters off. The ones that weren’t annoying us were at the campsite nearby, hissing and fighting over scraps. To make things worse, our air-mattresses went down in the middle of the night, and when the tide came in about 3am, the water was lapping at our toes.

We had locked everything we could away either in the tent or eskie. But the rats weren’t fussy. They feasted on the plastic of my snorkelling mask I left hanging on a tree, they chewed holes in a napkin and all but gobbled up the outer cardboard box of a mosquito coil.

It rained on our third night and we were forced to sleep in the tent in the middle of Rat City, amid the hissing, squeaking and fighting.

It was the first time in my life I was too scared to get up in the middle of the night for a pee. I figured that if rats climbed trees to eat plastic, there’s no telling how tasty they might find my morsel.

A kind and sensitive rat exterminator would have come in very handy in this situation, turning his back and fighting off rats: "I’ll hold them back while you piddle, sir.’’

Fortunately, the rats seemed to go home to bed when the sun rose - so the days had the potential for plenty of romance. It was just a shame that we both had so much sleep to catch up on.

First published in The Examiner, Launceston

@May, 1995 John Martin. All Rights Reserved.

NB: I called this site Dunno because I kept drawing a blank when I had to put a name to it