My house is alive!

Mar 30, 20

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What is disturbing me? That simple answer eludes me tonight…

My house is alive!

(You know when there’s something in your house don’t you?)

I sense something… and wake in the dead of the night.

I’m accustomed to echos from the forest: the buttress drumming of chimpanzees, cicadas, the ‘yawning’ sound of black and white Colobus, the insistent call of the Red-chested Cuckoo, the occasional trumpeting of an elephant… but tonight’s noise is subtle. And it’s all around me.

I switch on the light, hoping I will hear the frightened scuttling noise of a mouse or rat. Nothing.

Faint sounds suggest the ‘pitter patter’ of rain but that’s not it. There is definitely something moving in my house…

I hear a rustling sound high in the thatch above my head.

I thump the mattress with my foot to try and disturb ‘it.’

Nothing.

My wooden house has big gaps between the floorboards. Every forest sound – and some of its creatures – permeate it. I bathe in the soothing sounds of the wild. I feel secure under my net.

And then THUD.

A big thud usually means a gecko – or occasionally a snake! – has fallen out of the thatch. I don’t see anything.

I fall out of bed but nothing moves in the alarm I’m trying to create.

I can’t be bothered to find my glasses but notice a wasp flying around my light (unusually active at this hour). On the floor is a moth, struggling to fly. I think nothing of it.

I put in my ear plugs and turn on my side for a minute… let me sleep…

Minutes pass but it’s no good, my senses are bristling now.

This time I get up properly. On with the glasses and – with just one eye open, fearing what I may see – I switch on the main light.

SIAFU!

Read: Ants With Attitude

Ahead of me, past the end of my bed, are a thousand black dots. A thousand moving black dots that are eating everything in their path.

Everything falls into place – the minuscule noises, the panicking insects, the sense that I am not alone…

When the siafu move in, EVERYTHING moves out. Moths, geckos and spiders scarper before the invasion of the ravenous, relentless army.

I don’t hesitate. I too scarper to the kitchen where I tear off my pyjamas as I feel the ants bite.

By 7.30 am – just two hours later – there is barely any evidence of the tiny reasons for abandoning my bed. (Have I imagined the invasion?)

All is quiet again.

All is still.

The only trace of the siafus’ passage is a fine dust debris…

In the morning I found this fragment of discarded snakeskin on my floor. My ‘siafu cleaning team’ had made a thorough job of cleaning the inside of my thatched roof!

Read more about my life on the edge of Kibale Forest.