April 11, 2005

I keep on going back and forth on the question of my going a bit nutty here.  It’s the sleepless nights.  Find it funny that I recorded the “Night of the Living Lizard” as I have now discovered that one lizard is peanuts compared to what I have now dubbed the Zoo of my room.  We got multiple lizards.  They talk and growl at each other.  Potentially fight.  But that may be the mice.  Who may or may not be living under my mattress and running across the headboard.  And then there is something that flies behind the curtains lining the room.  I’m thinking bats.  I hear them outside the door each night so they may as well be in the room.  And then if I have a particularly odiferous dinner (coq, fish), a whole gang of cats crouch by my door, scratching at it every so often even long long after the plate has been removed.  Food also attracts some unidentified insect that scuttles across the floor so quickly that it has never been properly identified.  I’m thinking cafar (cockroach), but much swifter than the big lazy ones of Yoff. The first night I heard the noise, I spent a good amount of time with my headlamp, trailing the noise (this was before I became deathly afraid of my headlamp at these cursed hours).  The insect was largish, brown and at one point, lodged itself in my daypack.  I poked at my daypack and the little bastard leapt or flew or something totally unnatural that assured my absolute terror every time I heard its myriad legs scuttle across my sand strewn floor.  What else? Oh yes, I have halted my investigations of these creatures because every time I turn on my light a single chien mechant (mean dog) that is inevitably sitting outside my window starts barking and growling.  And soon enough the whole gang of these mangy muts is gathered outside my window.  I could be paranoid or hallucinating—both quite probable.  But regardless of my actions, the chiens mechants ululate until the wee hours of the morn and I would prefer not to be the object of their attention.  So basically, I have become deathly afraid of the dark, spending my nights watching time drag on, dimly let by the florescent green glow of mon montre (my watch).