Rats, Reflexes & Survival Instinct by Tukur Ridwan

A large tree in the middle of green woodland. Large white text reads: Rats, Reflexes & Survival Instinct. Smaller text reads: Discussing disability in fairy tales and folklore.

I have no cat in this room, so I sometimes feel like prey without a pet— preyed on by rats and their misdemeanours. Not one at a time, and not once do they pillage my room with their teeth. Faster than any reflex I could manifest, they bolt into safety like criminals. Survival instinct knows no moral bounds. At least, not for these little, unrepentant burglars with dentition that can break a glass or tear into a jerry can. Sometimes, I wake in the night to their noises, just the same way ruthless robbers steal your sleep forever with a dose of PTSD. At this point, how they enter doesn’t matter— after-the-facts that cannot alter the fact that smaller mammals have taken away your peace. My corrective measures may fix the broken window net, but not the broken loaves of bread, nor the broken pieces of paper where I drafted some poems. The BS of a rodent’s teeth is the ugly side of survival that neither follows the rules nor respects boundaries. Keeping vigils to mourn my poisoned sleep for a night, and distorted sleep cycles for a week, and a disorganised body block in a month, is the new routine eclipsing the one I planned for my self-care goals. I wonder if they have the brains to consider the hours I spend drafting poems or doing other duties, and let me find rest. I guess instinct is all they have left to live for the short while before the gums trap them, or before the pesticides do their worst. Not with their squeaks, or snake-like hisses that scare the shit out of me when the light is off, or other cacophonies they create with the slightest movement too heavy for my brain. Not their rough thuds when they fall from the curtain pole. The one time I chased an adolescent rat across the cable strapped on the wall, he stunned me with a Tom Cruise stunt— standing high on my door’s angle and looking me right in the eyes. I wonder what he was up to, and I’m sure he wondered what I was up to, looking at a predator as tall as the door he’s standing on. With a reflex designed for eluding a cat’s swift paws, I knew I stood no chance— not when I was about to move an inch. But I moved at least to get a broom, and that was all for me.

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About the author:
Tukur Ridwan (He/Him) writes from Lagos, Nigeria. Shortlisted in the Bridgitte James Poetry Competition (2025) and the Eriata Oribhabor Poetry Prize (2020), his works also appear in Afrocritik, Kelp Journal, ArtisansQuill, The African Writers Magazine, Kalahari Review, Cordite Poetry Review, and elsewhere. He won the Brigitte Poirson Monthly Poetry Contest (March 2018), authored A Boy's Tears on Earth's Tongue (Authorpedia, 2019), and The Forgiveness Series (Ghost City Press, 2022). He loves black tea, sometimes coffee. Twitter/IG @Oreal2kur