communing with nature, part ii

I was alone in the office for a while yesterday, which was kind of weird. Even with Harriet and Albert gone, I'm still sharing space with a small army of people: Agatha, Robin, Betty using the sewing machine, Nancy writing up grocery budgets, Blanche doing the admin work, volunteers teaching English (they used to teach elsewhere, but apparently they like having me nearby to answer questions), various small children who are generally crying or peeing or both, not to mention the world's most god-awful annoying cat.

So anyway, I was alone in the office, for once, which meant that I was the only person around to witness the big old snake scooting right in the door like it owned the place.

And, look: I've long since made my peace with the snakes here. I really had no choice. They're always frantically darting out across the path in front of me, like deer on a highway, because it literally does not occur to them that they could just wait two seconds for me to pass by. I see them wriggling and swinging in the trees next to the spider path. At night, I hear them dicking around in the irrigation ditch under my house.

(Aside: a volunteer recently asked if he could walk barefoot into the ditch to do some clean-up, and I was like, "Sure! I mean, there are snakes and frogs and bizarrely razor-finned fish in there, and you will probably die. But whatever, man, I'm not your dad.")

So anyway, the snakes and I have an agreement of sorts. I make plenty of noise to let them know I'm coming, especially at night, and they stay the ever-loving hell out of my way. I don't scream or grab a machete when I see them - unlike some people I could mention - and they haul ass in another direction. I do my thing, and they do theirs.

This snake had evidently not received the memo, because it attempting to do its thing in the office, a small building with limited escape routes and a no-shoes policy. There's a no-snakes policy as well - I checked - but as everyone knows, fucking snakes can't read for shit.

In the five seconds it took for me to think, SNAKE SNAKE OH GOD DO THEY REALLY HAVE TO MOVE LIKE THAT, the snake disappeared under a desk, leaving me standing there barefoot and catatonic, a pillar of salt in a pee-stained t-shirt. Completely stunned by what had just happened, I stared at the desk with intense concentration, as if by the power of my mind it might levitate or become transparent or, even better, explode and kill us all.

None of these things happened. I eventually summoned the courage to peek under the desk, but the snake was nowhere to be seen. I wasn't about to play hide-and-seek with the legless bastard, so I slowly went back to my desk and sat down in my chair. With both my feet up on the seat. For two hours.

Because, man, things are always crawling on me here. Geckos dart up my leg while I'm showering before bed. Millipedes get frisky with me while I'm in bed. I'm forever picking ants off my neck and arms, out of my nose and bra. (I don't want to talk about it.) I wake up every morning with bright red bites from the spiders that manage to infiltrate my mosquito net. I have actually had a snake zip across my feet out on the spider path, and somehow managed not to shit myself and die. I try to be a grown-up about these things. Whatever, I love waking up to millipedes on my calf! Come on, geckos, at least buy me a drink first! Ha! ha!

But you guys, there was a SNAKE in the OFFICE. Actually, for all I know, it might still be in here. Like I said, this building doesn't offer a lot of escape routes, and someone generally notices when a snake slithers across the floor. So just think about that the next time you're having a bad day at work. Your coworkers might all be idiots and your papers could probably be pushed by a monkey, but at least your risk of snake attack is < 0.1%.

And then! Oh, yes, there's an "and then," because when is there not, with me? And then I went out for my Thai lesson, to the little gazebo where Khruu Aajaan and I try not to strangle each other, and just as I was grabbing the whiteboard, a massive huntsman appeared out of nowhere right next to my hand. This was not the sort of spider you might keep under a cup on your bathroom floor - firstly because that would be like attempting to trap an rhinoceros under a trashcan, so you would really need a saucepan or a salad bowl or something, and secondly because upon finding that spider in your bathroom you would immediately evacuate all your vital organs through your, ah, asterisk and the spider would feast on your still-warm remains.

Back in the gazebo, I made a horrible, strangled noise of despair and jerked my hand back at approximately the speed of sound. Instead of investigating the cause of my panic, Khruu Aajaan peered curiously at my stricken face, like a dog that won't stop staring at your finger when you tell her to fetch.

"Spider! Big spider!" I said, or would have said if I weren't choking on my tongue. It came out more like, "HRGLDIBLRNK."

Khruu Aajaan eventually deciphered my gurgling and wild gesticulation, and finally glanced over at the whiteboard, from which the huntsman had by now vanished without a trace. He chuckled. "Mai bpen rai, mai bpen rai," he said, parroting the catchphrase of all Thailand. No big deal.

Mai bpen rai my adrenaline-shocked ass, buddy. Okay, so huntsman spiders aren't usually the biting sort, at least not where humans are involved, but I reserve the right to fear any arachnid that could beat me in an arm-wrestling match.

I'd like to say that all this is making me a tougher, more resilient person, a slightly more feminine Bear Grylls, capable of laughing off or snacking on any vermin that crosses my path. But the truth is that I have learned nothing. I am a bug-fearing woman-child and always will be. I deal with it - all of it, all the snakes and spiders and millipedes and the unspeakably boisterous rats in my ceiling - only because my sole alternative is death, and there are too many mangoes in the world for that to be a viable option. If I could somehow kill off every single creepy-crawly in this province, I would do it in a heartbeat, and to hell with the ecosystem.

As it is, I am become Death, the destroyer of invertebrate worlds. I crush helpless rolled-up millipedes on my bedroom floor; I mutilate any ant foolish enough to approach me; I smash spiders into the bathroom wall and leave their spider children to starve. Anything smaller and less powerful than me is fair game, and as soon as they cross a certain annoyance threshold, they are finished.

So just keep that in mind, cat.