He nearly screamed! His face was blotchy with swollen hives. The second he touched one, it began to itch. There was only one thing he knew of that could cause this reaction—rodents! Among all the other maladies he suffered through his childhood was a severe allergy to rodents—mice, rats, squirrels, hamsters, gerbils, even the dog-sized capybara.

As he hurried out of the restroom to find a pharmacy, he nearly collided with a man he recognized from the flight who was carrying a small crate. A tiny pink snout with white fur and pale whiskers wiggled through a breathing hole—mocking him, albino to albino.

“Ahh!” He screamed in horror and roughly shoved the unwary man out of his way. The crate clattered to the ground, and a hinge broke free upon impact.

One of the interesting facts about rats is that they can squeeze through openings no bigger than a half-dollar coin. The gap in the crate was slightly larger than that. Fleeing its smashed cage, the rat skittered behind the nearest large object—the leg of Dai She. The sound of a grown man screaming in fright was too much for the poor rat to take.

It, too, screamed.

The high-pitched squeal doubled in intensity as the dancing trunk of a leg stomped down heavily, catching the tip of the long pink tail.

Irrational terror gripped both large man and small beast as they simultaneously lunged for the safety of the restroom. Dai She ran blindly ahead until he was stopped by a wall, at which point he turned and fell, nearly breathless, into a stall, where he sat blubbering like a fool, holding the broken door closed with his feet.

The rat took a different path. It turned left and hugged the base of the wall, squeezing through the gaps between the stalls until it arrived at the last one, where it hid behind a toilet occupied by a large man. Its rapid rodent breath was masked by the sound of whimpering sobs.

“Gigi,” called the man with the crate. “Oh, Gigi.”

The rat, upon hearing its name, stepped cautiously from behind the toilet. It almost made it out of the stall unnoticed—but then Dai She saw it out of the corner of his eye.

“Aiii!”

Dai She jumped straight up, stomping wildly until one foot landed squarely in the unflushed-by-the-previous-occupant toilet bowl.

Gigi spotted her broken cage, along with the familiar face of her owner, and raced to safety, happily leaving the blotchy man with the smelly, wet feet behind.

An hour later, his face smeared with anti-itch cream and his shoes still damp, a somewhat composed Dai She warily left the confines of the restroom. And just when he thought his day couldn’t get any worse, he arrived at the baggage claim only to find that his suitcase had been lost.