Creatures. Little animals. Legs. Hairy ones.
Like Golde says in Fiddler on the Roof: May the czar [insert instead: horrible insects and hairy rodents] live a long life [insert instead: lives] and stay they hell away from us! Ugh.
One might think, that with all of the time I spend in developing countries, I might get used to the minions of such places: her little four-plus-legged friends. But I simply cannot. Cannot!
Adam will meet me here in a few days, and for his arrival I organized a little cabin on the land of Dechen Choling into which to welcome him. I spent an afternoon hoovering, washing the windows, clean sheets straight from the line smelling like the French countryside, picking little flowers and placing them in mason jars on the windowsill, next to the bed. I pilfered small speakers from the office and connected my iPod, hung a sachet of fresh rosemary from the doorframe ...
And then I noticed them. Cobwebs. Assorted sized and shapes, tucked into nooks and behind the beautiful exposed ceiling beams, behind the armoire, feathering in the wind around my bloody rosemary, still dripping with dew. A few daddy longlegs, which I know are harmless. And then a few of the monstrous arachnids common to this region, and to slightly damp cabins with high ceilings. I spent the rest of the afternoon removing them, carefully, not wanting to kill them. On the end of the broomstick, or by gently covering them in a glass and sliding a specially cut spider-removing piece of cardboard under the glass and placing them outside somewhere in the grass.
I returned a few hours later, with the subtle feeling of spiders crawling all over me, the usual feeling when one emerges from spider removal detail - and there were just as many new spiders lurking once again in the familiar corners. How could it be? I wondered, as I had just spent so much time and energy not murdering their siblings, how could more have come? Then I realized, to my great horror, that they must be lurking in unforeseen places. Like in the meager carpet, or under the bed. There must be a goddamned army of them somewhere, somewhere I couldn't see or find.
Daddy longlegs are one thing. I don't think they bite, althought I'm sure they spend a good part of their evenings crawling through the hair of strange humans in their midst and laying eggs in their underwear baskets only a few feet away. I can live with the Daddy longlegs. It's their cousins, the horrible hairy monsters, that concern me.
They range in size, but they are horrible all around. They have a substantial weight and bulk, and their little legs are so heavy that when the iPod turns off and quiet descends, I can hear their legs making a taptaptaptap across the walls as they run about, no doubt planning to nest in my ears or build a fortress to their fallen comrades in my shoes in the corner.
The first night I thought to myself: be brave, young Indiana Jones. You've faced worse before. Shrews, mice, cockroaches the size of baseball cards. And yet. And yet ... I couldn't quite find that restful place. I imagined the spiders either a] malicious, or b] oblivious. Whichever way you choose, that still means that they couldn't give a damn about me or my requirement of personal space.
Somehow I managed to fall asleep, my blankets wrapped around me like a death shroud, waiting. I awoke in the morning, immediately looked to the ceiling and the exposed beams. Nothing. To my left, to my right, nothing. I sighed an exhale of relief. Then I saw him. A big monster, staring at me from under the leaves of the flower jar on the table next to the bed. Only half a meter from my delicate sleeping face, watching, no doubt planning some sort of attack. I jumped up, with the now familiar feeling of thousands of them crawling all over me, and reached for my glass. In my rush to cup him and slide the cardboard underneath, I accidently crushed him.
It was an accident! Spider gods, accept my lamentions! Accident! Accident!
And he gushed some sort of miserable spider blood, thick and black like ink, all over the table. Something that required cleaning solvent and not just water to remove. It was awful.
The rest of the day I spent cowering in the chateau and shrine room, away from the scene of the crime I had just committed. What if he were some sort of chief, or the high priest of the community, or worse, a pregnant mother or wizened old queen? I slunk in late that night, and no spiders awaited my arrival. They must be waiting in ambush, I thought.
I tried for an unsuccessful fifteen minutes to sleep. Though all was silent, I thought I could hear a little warcry from somewhere under the bed. Attack! Kill the two-legged beast! they screamed. Or so I thought.
That was quite enough for me. I grabbed my blankets and made a flying leap from the bed straight into my fliflops near the door, and ran away into the night to seek a safe place, safe and far away from the murderous mutiny about to explode in my honor. On my way, fumbling in the dark with my little flashlight, I almost squashed a hedgehog who was making his nightly rounds through the grassy path.
Once my heart started beating again, I made it into the chateau and fell exhausted on a couch in the Marpa Room. I shook out my duvet, waiting for the little devils to emerge. They didn't, and I could finally rest, away from the Spider Shack.
I moved out the next day, and into a caravan like the little criminal gypsy that I am.
Like Golde says in Fiddler on the Roof: May the czar [insert instead: horrible insects and hairy rodents] live a long life [insert instead: lives] and stay they hell away from us! Ugh.
One might think, that with all of the time I spend in developing countries, I might get used to the minions of such places: her little four-plus-legged friends. But I simply cannot. Cannot!
Adam will meet me here in a few days, and for his arrival I organized a little cabin on the land of Dechen Choling into which to welcome him. I spent an afternoon hoovering, washing the windows, clean sheets straight from the line smelling like the French countryside, picking little flowers and placing them in mason jars on the windowsill, next to the bed. I pilfered small speakers from the office and connected my iPod, hung a sachet of fresh rosemary from the doorframe ...
And then I noticed them. Cobwebs. Assorted sized and shapes, tucked into nooks and behind the beautiful exposed ceiling beams, behind the armoire, feathering in the wind around my bloody rosemary, still dripping with dew. A few daddy longlegs, which I know are harmless. And then a few of the monstrous arachnids common to this region, and to slightly damp cabins with high ceilings. I spent the rest of the afternoon removing them, carefully, not wanting to kill them. On the end of the broomstick, or by gently covering them in a glass and sliding a specially cut spider-removing piece of cardboard under the glass and placing them outside somewhere in the grass.
I returned a few hours later, with the subtle feeling of spiders crawling all over me, the usual feeling when one emerges from spider removal detail - and there were just as many new spiders lurking once again in the familiar corners. How could it be? I wondered, as I had just spent so much time and energy not murdering their siblings, how could more have come? Then I realized, to my great horror, that they must be lurking in unforeseen places. Like in the meager carpet, or under the bed. There must be a goddamned army of them somewhere, somewhere I couldn't see or find.
Daddy longlegs are one thing. I don't think they bite, althought I'm sure they spend a good part of their evenings crawling through the hair of strange humans in their midst and laying eggs in their underwear baskets only a few feet away. I can live with the Daddy longlegs. It's their cousins, the horrible hairy monsters, that concern me.
They range in size, but they are horrible all around. They have a substantial weight and bulk, and their little legs are so heavy that when the iPod turns off and quiet descends, I can hear their legs making a taptaptaptap across the walls as they run about, no doubt planning to nest in my ears or build a fortress to their fallen comrades in my shoes in the corner.
The first night I thought to myself: be brave, young Indiana Jones. You've faced worse before. Shrews, mice, cockroaches the size of baseball cards. And yet. And yet ... I couldn't quite find that restful place. I imagined the spiders either a] malicious, or b] oblivious. Whichever way you choose, that still means that they couldn't give a damn about me or my requirement of personal space.
Somehow I managed to fall asleep, my blankets wrapped around me like a death shroud, waiting. I awoke in the morning, immediately looked to the ceiling and the exposed beams. Nothing. To my left, to my right, nothing. I sighed an exhale of relief. Then I saw him. A big monster, staring at me from under the leaves of the flower jar on the table next to the bed. Only half a meter from my delicate sleeping face, watching, no doubt planning some sort of attack. I jumped up, with the now familiar feeling of thousands of them crawling all over me, and reached for my glass. In my rush to cup him and slide the cardboard underneath, I accidently crushed him.
It was an accident! Spider gods, accept my lamentions! Accident! Accident!
And he gushed some sort of miserable spider blood, thick and black like ink, all over the table. Something that required cleaning solvent and not just water to remove. It was awful.
The rest of the day I spent cowering in the chateau and shrine room, away from the scene of the crime I had just committed. What if he were some sort of chief, or the high priest of the community, or worse, a pregnant mother or wizened old queen? I slunk in late that night, and no spiders awaited my arrival. They must be waiting in ambush, I thought.
I tried for an unsuccessful fifteen minutes to sleep. Though all was silent, I thought I could hear a little warcry from somewhere under the bed. Attack! Kill the two-legged beast! they screamed. Or so I thought.
That was quite enough for me. I grabbed my blankets and made a flying leap from the bed straight into my fliflops near the door, and ran away into the night to seek a safe place, safe and far away from the murderous mutiny about to explode in my honor. On my way, fumbling in the dark with my little flashlight, I almost squashed a hedgehog who was making his nightly rounds through the grassy path.
Once my heart started beating again, I made it into the chateau and fell exhausted on a couch in the Marpa Room. I shook out my duvet, waiting for the little devils to emerge. They didn't, and I could finally rest, away from the Spider Shack.
I moved out the next day, and into a caravan like the little criminal gypsy that I am.
