Given the title of this blog, you probably think I’m referring (yet again) to toilets and/or wastewater. But in this context, I’m speaking more Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, except that fairly much all of the animals which seem to like to interact with me are of the insect variety...
The first night we were here I was startled by a couple of friendly cockroaches hanging out in our bathroom- not too bad, something that could happen in Aus. A couple of days ago I opened my work folder and shrieked as a hunstman-type spider jumped out at me. The same day I was washing my clothes when a frog jumped out of the drain. Yesterday morning I went to leave the room and noticed a very spiky caterpillar chilling out on my thongs.
This is all fairly normal, and I wasn’t scared of the animals, just shocked at their sudden appearance. Then, on returning to our room last night I noticed a shape moving down near the collection of shoes at our door- it turned out to be a scorpion. Then as Amanda and Mariel returned I noticed a second scorpion- so we ran inside and slammed the door behind us. After a few minutes we tried to escape outside again, but the scorpions were guarding the door and wiggling their whip-tails at us. (Luke suggested that if we were really channeling Bear Grylls we would have bitten off their heads and used them as a protein source- luckily we weren’t that desperate). So we waited a while, and then I decided to pull the balled up socks out of my joggers to check there was nothing in there- alas, *something* had crawled in there in the few days they had been outside, laid a nest, and hatched. The sock + nest were thrown into a bucket of water and the shoes thrown outside to be dealt with later. This morning I performed a surgical procedure to remove the insoles from my joggers (thanks to Luke and his Dad for the Swiss Army knife!) and check that there were no longer any residents- I think we’re okay, but I still haven’t put them back on yet...
After the scorpion/mysterious shoe tenant incidents I decided to chill out and read my New Scientist magazine (I’m going to miss them, if you want to send me a present I would appreciate super-dorky magazines :D). Mariel and Amanda had gone to bed already, so I was lying there with my head torch on reading about 3D laser printing when some massive flying ant thing decided to try to land in my mouth and enjoy the light... at that stage I threw off the head torch and conceded the night to the insects (and nightmares about Indian taxis).
I seem to be the insect whisperer- no one else is having issues like these- and I certainly hope it is contained to the insect world, because I don’t feel like having any similar run-ins with Nepali tigers or rhinos...
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| One of the less dangerous insect encounters |
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