One morning in 1968 my crusty British boss was anonymously ‘anointed’ from above. Ensconced in his room, several nondescript particles suddenly descended on his vaselinedhead as something scampered across the attic above him. He quickly realised it wasn’t manna but rat droppings. Indignant, he thumped the calling bell repeatedly. Peon Sengani rushed in, taking in the scene at a glance. The Brit’s face had reddened like an overripe tomato. But Sengani placated him, saying the needful would be done pronto.
While the boss disinfected himself in the toilet, a rat trap was quickly placed in the attic baited with a piece of burnt coconut. Poor Sengani, while hurriedly throwing open the trapdoor to the attic, had all but scalped himself. Despite a thudding head, he had carefully plugged the chinks in the rafters with newspaper to prevent ‘confetti’ raining down on the boss again.
Surprisingly, the trap remained untouched for the next two days, indicating that the rodent was cunning. To make matters worse, the piquant scent of the burnt coconut bait percolated down to the boss’s table, ‘tainting’ the flavour of his freshly brewed tea and making him sulk over the delay in killing the rat. Nevertheless, egged on by me, Sengani persevered, confident of succeeding sooner or later.
Two more days passed without success. Then one evening the boss asked Sengani to fetch a large leather-bound tome containing tea yield statistics from the attic. As he gingerly descended the ladder with the tome, Sengani felt something stir in one of his trouser pockets. Panicking, he shrieked in alarm—only to see a rat emerge from his pocket and scurry down the ladder. More from fear than intent, he dropped the tome—right on the fleeing fugitive, fatally flattening it!
The denouement came later. “Did you carry any burnt coconut pieces in your pocket to bait the trap?” I asked Sengani. He nodded sheepishly. So that was it! The impudent rat had considered it safer to enter an unsuspecting man’s pocket for its favourite snack than a deadly trap.
Unsurprisingly, though sanitised, for several days the boss refused to touch the killer tome—even with the proverbial bargepole as it were. “Yield comparisons can wait!” he snapped evasively when I reminded him.