Everyone has their own Loch Ness monster to deal with. Mine was in the form of a lizard. Normally, I fancy myself in control of my fear faculties, and can semi-calmly traverse shrubby gauntlets and gecko-laden hallways. It became evident though, that some forces in the universe conspired for an eventful animal-interactive evening.
One contributing force was the self-induced sleep deprivation of the previous 2 nights. Mark (my compadre and the person in charge of A/V as well as creating a web presence) and I had been running around the conference compound during the day, making sure Human Right activists didn’t violate our human rights with unending petty technology needs and indignant expectationalisms (an entrenched sense of high expectation manifested by abuse of fellow individuals).
At night, we would patiently wait till the last of internet addicts and/or groupies of our little internet dungeon would depart, so we could get down to the business of transferring some content onto the website in the US. This would take us into the wee hours (e.g. 2,3,4 am). By So on day 3 I was already in a sleepless, frantic, and oddly entertaining universe.
But on this day, the universe decided to show me the animal kingdom up-close, to the point that by the time I finally got to bed at 5 a.m., I firmly believed I had landed in the Jurassic Park Island, unsure of my fate as a precarious mammal in a world of predators.
At 11 a.m. I ran past the terrace restaurant towards my room to fetch yet another wire, or some other techie trinket. By the time I returned, I looked through the restaurant at the place I just had run under, while a Pakistani Participant woman hurried towards me, in a shudder, and making some comments about a snake. As it turned out, a 5 foot green snake had fallen off a tree onto the path I had taken, about 35 seconds after I had been there.
As the compound dog (an unpettable she-dog with battle scars all over her body) tended to her snake neutralization duties, I wondered to myself what I would have done had this snake decided an earlier jump.
At about the same exact moment a spider landed on my head. The startling coincidence of thought and reality jolted me just a tiny bit, unbeknownst to me foreshadowing of what was coming my way later in the evening.
Later in the afternoon, a jumping lizard surprise-hopped over my feet as I was walking by the pool, helping a cosmopolitan Britt (Stephanie) with some flower photography. I managed to maintain a façade of machismo as I pretended to be interested in taking a snapshot of the bouncy creature, all the while hoping it would just keep on running away.
A butterfly landed on my elbow about 5 minutes later, and unknown rustling sounds in the bushes near the walking path reminded me of the sharing of space with other creatures.
That evening at around midnight, I found out how much sharing was expected of me. I was scurrying past the kid-pool towards my room to fetch a CD or something, when I noticed a tiny frog with a phenomenal leap. Like a green walnut-half on a catapult, it flew about 4 feet in a great arch, landing on the pool side of me. As I leaned over to take a closer look, it jettisoned itself again, landing on the edge of the pool, paused for a moment to take another look at me, and then launch itself in another parabolic arch that, unfortunately for him, ended in the blue and over-chlorinated pool.
I was beginning to feel a sense of over exposure to the animal kingdom, as I was walking on the whitewashed open corridors of our hotel rooms; a popular hangout (literally) for scores of insect eating tiny lizards (geckos) with their suction cupped limbs accommodating their anti-gravitational manoeuvres. Some ungodly loud squawking from a monitor lizard in the nearby shrubs unsettled me a bit more, and I was glad to finally get to my room.
As I absent-mindedly reached to put my key on the desk, the phone handle jangled violently, and something jumped onto the tissue box, toppled it, and scurried some more to land on the wall. And there I was, air sucked of my lung, petrified in an eternal instant, staring at a splotchy dark green colored scaley creature diagonally oriented on the wall with arched back and salamander-telescopes one of which was staring back at me.
Flight or fight instinct in both of us chose flight, and we scurried in opposite directions, with him making flippity-flop noises with his tail slapping against the back of the table, and the sofa, and me making a “wlllaaaaachhhh” sound as I ran 3 steps off and froze again.
The salamander-dragon also stopped, now visible through the sofa’s back-rest slats, he was now flattening his limbs and putting his chin against the wall to pretend he was invisible or cute, except for the fact that a 10-inch dark green lizard on a white wall, in my bedroom, is hardly camouflage-able, and definitely not, NOT cute.
Here I was, the supposed intelligence pinnacle of species, facing a relatively tiny creature with only a reptilian brain. Yet, I would give him better odds. Finally my front-lobial processing kicked in, I opened the door, closed the other escape routes, and flanked him by walking over the beds to get him between me and the doorway, hoping that I could direct his next burst of scurrying towards his freedom and my ability to ever use the room again.
As I was preparing to shoo him out that way, I happen to notice a tiny 2 inch cartoon-like gecko about 2 inches away from my eyes on the balcony’s glass door. I chuckled to myself, mentioned to the tiny one to stay put, as I had bigger lizards to shoo.
Here it went: I made eye contact with (one of) the dragonlet’s eyes, clapped hard, stomped towards him, yelling in a highly colored language and angry tone urging him to get out of my room. He respectively blinked his eye, jacked up from his ‘stealth’ flattened mode to the all-terrain high chassis mode, pumped his body up and down once, and vanished behind the sofa, only to reappear on the far end of the table.
Boldened, I dispensed some more words and clapped his way again. He then lunged off the table onto the floor, but instead of scurrying straight out of the room, he turned right, and hopped out of sight onto the cabinetry where the fridge, my snacks, and extra pillows were stored. I could no longer see him, but could hear his clip-claps alongside the wooden walls of the cabinetry, and then there was silence.
I could no longer see him, or hear his rustling, or comfortably move towards the door past the cabinetry into which he vanished. Here I was, standing on the edge of one bed, leaning across the way to see if I can spot him in my snacks or stacks of undershirts, while the wide open door would likely be invitation to other wild kingdom’s creatures to join this humbling predicament.
At this point one of the Indian Participants (Somya, the dragon-slayer) walked past my door, and to my life affirming relief (and mortifying embarrassment) came in to see what all the fuss was about. As I got the momentary resolve to walk off the bed and hurry out of the room, I mentioned ‘big lizard, in my cupboard…I don’t know where it is’. It must be enjoyable for a role reversal like that when chivalrous women with more of a rational view on lizards can show their fearlessness and save the sissy cityslicker type man from having a panic attack over something 10 times smaller, and 10 times more afraid of you.
She climbed atop tables and sofas, checked inside cupboards and among my (unoccupied) undies. She finally located a hole behind the mini fridge that led to the panelling overhead, and after a few moments, located a comfortably out of range lizard staring down at us from the overhead slats of the ceiling. The only remaining option was to cover the hole with something, and hope the dragonlet did not have another passageway figured out.
I locked the door, and left for more midnight work. That night we worked until 5am, so by the time I returned to sleep in my bed, I was too exhausted and delirious to be afraid. I was just thinking to myself, if my reptilian roommate was related to Kimoto dragons who cripple their prey and eat them while they are still aware.
In the split second that I was not fully asleep yet, I had a conversation with my indoor predator, in which I asked: ‘will this hurt?’ and he responded: ‘Not to worry… you will not feel a thing….’
This night, though, I was not eaten by the 10-inch lizard. He instead treated me to a nightlong tapdance routine on the other side of the ceiling, as if to celebrate its victory of occupation over his supposedly pinnacle-of-intelligence adversary.
I moved out of that room the following day, and accepted yet another dose of humility about my place in the universe.
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