Our littlest friends

Last year, I lived in a lovely apartment in a neighborhood of Boston with my good friend Jill. We have loads of fun together and we seem to really bring out the weirdness in each other. For example, since both of us were nursing students, Jill and I named the mouse that ate our toaster crumbs HPV, just to infuriate our non-nursing roommate Dan. He, to this day, does not know what HPV stands for. So in keeping with the tradition and in honor of my darling Jill and our darling HPV, I have insisted to my current roommates that we give medical names to all the critters that appear in our Haitian household.

This is TiNic, named for nicotine. We wanted to name him after a stimulant since he is so jumpy. He was a short-term visitor, unfortunately. I bet he's back in the pool now and thoroughly grateful to be out of our room.


Every evening when I go to brush my teeth, I meet 2 very long antennae sticking out of the hole in the sink. They belong to the grandfather of all cochroaches. Since he is attracted to the sink, we named him Big D. D as in dehydration.



And finally, there is our mouse friend. He's been around for a long time, but we finally got a good look at him 2 months ago. "Wow," Casey exclaimed. "That is one skinny mouse!" Of course he's skinny - he's Haitian. And since we only ever caught him eating saltine crackers or chocolate, a diet that is decidedly low in protein, we decided to name him TiKwash, for kwashiorkor, the protein deficiency form of malnutrition.


A few weeks ago, I came into the bathroom and found TiKwash in the bottom of a dry 5 gallon bucket. I have no idea what he was doing in there but he couldn't get out on his own. I carried him, bucket and all, outside and released him. Since then, we haven't seen him.

I have to be honest. I kind of miss him.