The Kitties Strike Back (aka Death Comes to the Hofman Household)

It was an exciting time to be a missionary at Bongolo! We had just gotten word that the contents of the most recent container had made it through the port and customs (which can take weeks), and they were headed down to Bongolo on a couple of trucks! The long wait was finally over, and soon, we'd be receiving gifts that our families had sent us, along with a number of other items that we had ordered on line. Even though it was the middle of spring, "Christmastime is Here" could be heard being sung at the Hofman household, and we seriously considered breaking out the Charlie Brown Christmas show. Soon, we would be enjoying M&Ms, Malt-o-Meal, chips that are actually crisp, Swiss chocolate, and an exercise machine to burn off all the aforementioned items! Ah, life was good.
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But then, in the middle of a long day of auditing, we received news that would make an accountant want to throw down his favorite calculator - one of the trucks had rolled over on the muddy roads! It had been raining steadily the whole day, so we knew there were some definite dangers. And this is a picture of the truck.

Much of the contents had spilled out on the ground, and many boxes were dented and muddy. Thank the Lord, no one was hurt. But what would become of our treasured stuff? We had a nice pot of chili brewing in anticipation of the arrival of our Fritos!! But all we could do was pray for the best. And what did God do? Just as we were sitting down for dinner, we got a call saying that a few of the boxes had arrived. We left our dinner and went down, and low and behold, one of the boxes contained our Fritos. God is just too good to us!

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Later that evening, thanks to the efforts of Paul (a fellow missionary) and many of the station workers, the rest of our boxes arrived. And thanks to the wonderful packing job of our parents and others, nothing major was lost.

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With joy in our hearts and a skip in our steps, we opened our boxes, oohed and aahed over the contents, and started putting things away. I (Eric) was wrestling with the tape on one of the boxes when I heard a shriek come from the pantry. Thinking it was merely Wendy's shriek of happiness over the Lindt Mint chocolate, I continued the unpacking. But when Wendy appeared, it was obvious that chocolate had not been the cause of the scream. Instead, it was cockroaches! According to Wendy, she had counted more than 20 in our food pantry (with many more likely in hiding)!

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But instead of panic, we thought things through rationally. We decided to just put the stuff in the kitchen overnight (instead of in the pantry). Wendy used up an entire can of insecticide spraying the pantry, we closed the pantry door, and then we gave our warrior kitties access to the kitchen overnight (since the pantry door has a big enough space at the bottom for even Gabon-sized roaches to make it through). If you wonder why we call them warrior kitties, you will soon find out. Here are our little warriors, at the ready for anything that might come through the pantry door (they even guarded our detergent!)

So, with the kitties standing guard, we went to bed feeling safe and secure. Getting up the next morning, we wondered what we would find. Little did we know that what awaited us was a battlefield, strewn with bodies. Here are but a few of the casualties.

Our kitties don't mess around when they have a house to protect!Needless to say, we were very happy with our little guys.

And our kitties were quite warn out. As a reward, we allowed them to stay inside all day and rest, and for lunch we opened two cans of tuna and gave them all the juice from the cans (they LOVE that stuff!)

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After this, things calmed down for a little while here at Chez Hofman. But life in the jungle never stays calm for long. One morning soon thereafter, I came out to feed the kitties, and what did I see in our screened in porch but a bat!! Pretty scary-looking, huh?

And where, you might ask, were the warrior kitties during all this? They were living up to their name, chasing that bat all over the porch. At times they got quite close to catching him. But the ability to fly proved just a little too much, and try as they may, they could never quite get him. We think the kitties must have chased him down from the attic. It was obvious that the bat had had quite a fright - it was shaking like a leaf! So, we didn't have the heart to hurt him. I decided to try to direct him out the door with a tennis racket.

But to no avail. If you look very closely in this picture taken by Wendy, photographer extraordinaire, you can see that we got him very close to the open door, but he flew right by and stayed in the porch. In the picture, he's about halfway up the left-hand side of the open door.

We left the screen door open all morning, hoping he would find his way out eventually, but when we came back for lunch, he was still there. Both he and the kitties were exhausted, the kitties sprawled on the floor, and the bat sleeping from the ceiling. So, Wendy called on Joanna, another missionary, and we borrowed her butterfly net. The next thing you know, Wendy had captured the bat, and the excitement was over for the day.

After studying the bat up close in the net for a few minutes, it was time for the release. We figured he would get away as quickly as possible. But when we released him, where did he go? Right under the awning of our house (where there is access to our attic!) Some people (or in this case, bats) never learn!

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And to top it all off, when we told the story to the gal that helps us clean the house, she asked what we did with the bat. When we told her we let it go, she was quite disappointed. She said that they are quite tasty, and she requested that the next time we catch a bat, we save it for her! Bonne appetite!