Sunday 8 June 2014

A drowned rat

On Tuesday June 3rd we walked up to the church and ruined village at the top of the hill behind Arki, passing a goat perched on a wall on the way back.

In the evening Mama's rooster was delicious!
Wednesday June 4th was the day when the strong southerly winds were forecast, though the latest forecast was for the heaviest winds to pass further South. Simon and Christiana had 47 knots in Nissiros and the taverna owner said this summer was the worst weather she had known in 55 years. We had only 20 knots, gusting to 28, and everyone was well dug in so there were no problems. We washed the boat down, which was covered in red dust from all the rain.
On Thursday we walked over to Tiganaka beach at the south of the island for a swim. The water was very cold, having been churned up by the south winds. Lin swam, but Simon went in up to his knees and chickened out. When we got back for lunch we found a bite taken out of our peach. Simon reassured Lin that it was probably just wasps (though it is too cold for there to be many wasps), but next morning a big bite had been taken out of our apple and there were droppings on the worktop. They were very small, so we hoped it was just a mouse, not a rat. There were also droppings on the floor and on the top bunk - it had obviously climbed up the mooring rope (we had put out a thick rope for the blow) and got in through the little hatch over the bunk. We couldn't find it in any of the accessible places, so we hoped it had gone home after eating its fill, but we set our rat catcher that night. At 3 am Lin heard a scuffling and a small rat was in the rat catcher.

 It looked plaintively at us with its little eyes, to say "let me out!". We thought of releasing it up the hill, but now it had learned to get into boats it would just come back to us or somebody else, so we put the rat in the ratcatcher with a couple of rocks in a polythene bag and lowered it into the water. Next morning we had a poor little drowned rat!
After putting him in the bin we emptied the dinghy, which was half full of water from all the rain, and set off for Lipsi to get water, do some washing and get some of their delicious chocolate cake.
On Sunday morning, 8th June, we motored down to the bay at the bottom of Lipsi and picked up a mooring to have a swim, before setting off to get back to Lakki.

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