There's a rat in me ceiling, what am I gonna do

Scratch, scratch... shuffle, shuffle... scratch, THUD.. scramble, scramble...

Something was living in my ceiling for a time. It made a lot of noise, scratching and scrambling and stomping above my head.

I was determined to ignore it, until my neighbor Bernal asked me: "Do you have a rat in your ceiling?"

"I have something in my ceiling, but it sounds a lot bigger than a rat."

"Ah. Must be a zorro."

Zorro means "fox" in Spanish, but in Costa Rica the word applies to a large, possum-like creature.

I lived with the foxy thing for a while. It woke me up a couple of mornings, and I wondered what kind of damage it would do to the house, but a renter's ignorance is bliss. Then, a couple of weeks ago, the noise stopped.

Shortly thereafter, a stench from the underworld developed in my spare bedroom. It smelled a little like mouse-infested house, and a lot like death. Incense had no power over it. Finally, I just closed the door and hoped for the best, which in this case meant rapid decomposition -- not a tall order in the tropics.

The odor of the poor thing’s demise is already abating. This, too, shall pass.