Journals of a Hotel Manager

Did you know that remote tropical islands have very little wild life on land?  I never thought about it before I came here.  We have the two resident crows who probably were stowaways on cargo ships which docked at the main island.  They are loud and obnoxious like all city crows.  The only indigenous animals on my island are fruit bats.  They live in the coconut trees.  Brown in color and with a wingspan of a good 3 feet, they are silent gliders across the turqoise blue at sunset.  During the day, I would occasionally see one swooping overhead, their leathery wings batting without a sound. 

But recently we have a new species on island.  I am sorry to say that rodents are among us.  They are, again, stowaways on cargo ships that transported timber from the other tropical countries.  Since there is no cat on the island, the crows eat only human leftovers and the bats are vegetarians - sorry, fruitarians - the rats run the island at night.  We set traps all over the place with little results and store food source carefully.  Their ferocious appetite is not to be messed with.  Last night, we discovered that a couple of bags of green tea in the kitchen were torn open and obviously chewed upon.  I guess they are getting hungry and desparate.

Chef has an idea.  Since kitchen and food sources belong to his territory, he finds the rodent problem particularly irritating.

“Why don’t we catch a few of these damned rats and burn them?  The smell and the scream will certainly scare the rest of them bad rats!” he proclaimed.

“And where do you think the rest of them will escape to? This is an island my friend.  You think they will steal one of our boats and sail into the sunset?” I laughed.

Once they are here, the rats will never leave - until we kill all of them.  I wish we could do a ceremony for the Rat God. 

Why is it that everywhere I go I need to deal with these bloody rodents? 

They scurry around in our makeshift restaurant at night since the cafeteria is still under renovation, illiciting a few yelps from female staff.  They pull acrobatic stunts a la Cirque du Soleil on a tiny ledge from the thatched roof.  Tonight one even came up to me as I was enjoying a rare cup of tea in the evening breeze on the wooden deck in front of the lobby.  It stopped barely a foot away from me, landed on its haunches and sat up like a dog begging for food.

That is just wrong.  I vow to myself I need to get rid of them before the opening, which is about 2 months away if things go on schedule.  

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