wandering wonderings: My House and My House-Mates

I naively believed that I was the only one living in my cottage – delighted to be living all by myself, making my own rules, wiping my own crumby counters, sharing the water in the kettle with no one but myself. It was not long before I realized that I was very much mistaken. Of course there are always those creeks and noises and scuttlings in the night, ones that you simply must accept when you’re living in an old cottage in a jungle-garden. One night however, the presence of the ‘others’ made themselves known – it was the night when I learned that I was merely a visitor and by no means the sole occupant.

I thought that I had seen most of the small wildlife there is to be creeped out by, but apparently Africa has nothing on Indonesia. Since I have been here I have seen the biggest geckos I have EVER seen in my life. I did not know that they could grow this enormous. For me geckos have always been rather cute, no longer than your middle finger. They become less cute when they’re the size of your foot. I am not joking. Why has no one ever told me that geckos can get so big? They look like they should be lizards, but then you know they’re geckos because of their little (or, in this case, not so little) gecko feet - the small round pads they use as toes. I have two of these monsters living in my kitchen, and I don’t much mind them but they do give me the krills a bit – so now, when I walk into my darkened kitchen at night I give a few claps of my hands to let them know that I'm here and it’s my kitchen right now, and I see their little over-sized gecko heads scuttle behind the kitchen cupboard.

One night I put out chickpeas to soak, in preparation for my first lunch with friends at home (how exciting!). In the morning (and this was the morning after the evening I discovered that there were giant geckos in my kitchen), I came into the kitchen to find that there had been a little visitor during the night. The little visitor has pushed back the tea-towel, helped himself/herself to some chickpeas and had a lovely meal – while leaving all the shells in a neat little pile next to the stove! I wasn’t sure if I should toss the chickpeas, as perhaps this little visitor was carrying some little diseases. I decided to wash them again, boil them and tell my guests the story – we all ended up tucking in, and since then have had no serious problems to report. When my landlady’s wife, Jeru, came in that morning, I attempted to tell her / act to her what had happened - our communication is conducted in a mixture of very basic Indonesian and English, and so I had to get out my notebook and draw a mouse, my gut-feeling telling me that this was the little villain. Clearly my artistic skills are improving as she laughed and nodded, “Tekus, Tekus”. Naughty Tekus!

I am loving the wildlife here – it is all so interesting and beautiful. I wake up every morning to the raucous sounds of roosters all greeting the morning, repeatedly, from about 5am onwards. In the mornings I sit on my verandah and have my tea, laughing at the chickens as they come scampering past – there is a white one I call Hopi, as he seems to make use of only one of his legs. The other day a dragon fly sat on my foot, and yesterday morning I watched a beautiful butterfly sit on my fruit-cutting knife and reach his long, skinny tongue out, to get to the juice. That was amazing! One night I arrived home, desperate to use the toilet, only to stop dead at the sight of the cockroach sitting on the toilet-bowl. YUCK! I think divine intervention helped me get rid of that one!

Here are some photos of other interesting creatures whom I have had the pleasure of meeting: