La natura en mi cama?

 

 

Blessings come in all shapes, sizes and animal disguises. For instance, the spirit which introduced itself as a flock of butterflies aloft in the tree next to my hammock, became a lil pinkish frog squatting on my mosquito net. Each day I was greeted with a new surprise as the spirit took form into larger and more exciting creatures. The second night in the frog had become a small gecko. In early morning of the third day, I was serenaded by the love songs of a large gecko lizard staring at me from the ledge above. The fourth day found me gawking at the hornbills outside my friend's bungalow.

Then things started to change...it was then that Spirit started to help me to confront some of my fears. I awoke in the middle of the night to the sounds of my plastic fruit bag (hanging off a nail in my bungalow) getting ruffled. While relieving myself, I was startled by a rat the size of a small chicken, or very large gecko [which, I suppose, fits more with the form changing theory]. My nursing mind started racing as to all the potential diseases this Spirit is accompanied by. None-the-less, I returned to bed, cocooning myself within my permetherined mosquito net.

Spirit must have been unimpressed by my lack of reaction to Mr. Rat, because the next night I was greeted with a being much smaller, and yet more fearful. Again, in the middle of the night I awoke to the rustle and stumbled out of my netted bed for the nightly bathroom ritual. This time, I took my torch hoping the beaming light would shine bright enough to disperse the fear and any Spirit form that accompanied it (electricity is only activated on the island for 4 hours each night). Surveying the ground for rats, I moved safely to the commode, turned and sat feeling a sense of accomplishment with the safe midnight journey. That's when I looked up. Straight ahead, a nice 5-inch long, black, shiny scorpion scuttled into the shadow of a crack in the wall. Oh My! Dorothy, we have a problem. We're not in Kansas anymore.

I survived. :)

Still, Great Spirit decided to one up herself once again. One of her last incarnations greeted me at hunting time—dusk--and again, it was on a trip to the commode. Now, feeling I must scan every inch of the bathroom before stepping into the gauntlet of nature, I opened the door, and looked up. And found I was in a standoff. There, not two feet above my head, two black beedy eyes stared back at me. The standoff began. We were still. No one moved. No one breathed. A few moments later, the 1.5 meter long, green and silver snake slowly turned back on itself and moved to my left, away from the obstacle of the door, so that it could get a better striking stance. I backed up. His forked tongue licked the air, investigating my intentions. I backed up. Within a few years turned minutes, Great Spirit became disinterested. I tucked my mosquito net tightly in and moved to my Dutch, Swedish and German friends to report my find. They all came running to my bungalow to scope the find. The landlady Et claimed it was a harmless tree snake—not poisonous, unlike the king cobra they have here lurking in the forest behind us. Only later, did a friend warn me that they jump.