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"Chosen Warrior" by Rosana Schaack—Excerpt from chapter 20: Night Crawlers
"Once Dad shut down the generator at night and the last of us headed to bed, the scratching began, soft at first, like fingernails brushing across a chalkboard. Then came the thumps, the scurrying sound in the attic, and the sharp clatter of metal pots in the kitchen.
We had night crawlers—destructive rodent nuisances—nothing like pets. These invaders crept into the house, multiplied quickly, attacked our food supply, and disrupted our sleep.

One night, I cracked open the bedroom door to find the source of the noise that had awakened me. Flicking on my flashlight, I aimed it down the hall. There, near the pantry, at the end of the hall, a creature as thick as my forearm sat on the rice bag like it owned the place. Its fur was patchy, its tail long and scaly, and its eyes black as coal. It did not flinch in the beam of the flashlight. Just stared. The size of it frightened me. I stumbled back into the room, crawled under the covers, and pulled them tight over my head.

How could we get rid of them?

The intruders were giant, stretching ten to twelve inches long and probably weighing a couple of pounds. They were not the monstrous Gambian breed, but close enough. I never bothered to learn their exact species. I did not care.

The rats took over the house. Schaackay and Dad set metal traps, but the rodents outsmarted them every time. Dad found heavy-duty glue at a local shop and spread it thickly on cardboard. However, we woke one morning to a grotesque sight—a rat dragging itself across the dining room, a torn glue trap clinging to its hindquarters like a backpack.
Nothing worked.
Desperate, Dad wrote to Mom in the States with a strange request—Purina Rat Killer. It turned out to be just what we needed. Only then did the rats begin to disappear.
By final count, we had cleared out fifty-one of those hairy monsters..."