Tiny Bat
A bat colony makes its home under the overhang on the back of the house. Each night, and well into the night, a tiny bat leaves the colony and enters the bedroom and hangs from the bamboo rafter off to the side of the bed. It is gone before daylight but leaves a reminder of its presence in the form of several well articulated black bat turds, released from above, making their way to the bedroom floor. Dropped carefully off to the side of the bed, a clearing outlined, at a distance from where ones feet mindlessly hit the ground first thing in the morning. The clearing ,a welcome mat.
A Scorpion
It had to be done. There was some fear, no trust and admittedly a measure of morbid curiosity when, with the flick of a hand towel the scorpion was knocked from the edge of the second floor lookout deck to the splash pool at ground level. It had known something was coming because it had flattened itself onto the low cement retaining wall of the lookout making itself look very convincingly like an ordinary brown stick. But the ruse didn’t work and it fell in dramatic slo-mo fashion, floating down and hitting the cement edge of the pool, buckling in half before continuing to the ground.
Consternation about flicking a scorpion off a wall and causing it to fall a single story is wasted worry. They are resilient creatures. They can go a year without eating, live under water for 2 days, and under extreme circumstances eat their young. So when after the fall, the scorpion simply straightened itself out and scooted away there was only mild surprise but also a dose of trepidation that retribution was on the scorpion’s list of survival strategies.
Black Ants
The large cement patio, once the place of festivities, could be seen in its entirety from the second floor deck. Years before it had been stained a lively and vibrant terra-cotta color. Now it was fading, a dull orange. Long gray cracks had formed, some of them randomly connecting. From above, it took on the look of a giant roadmap, the cracks creating a network of highways.
Then they arrived. Large black ants, hauling oversized, pink hibiscus flower petals. Truckers plying the highway of cracks, no pedal too large, no crack too deep, determined, a destination, no obstacles only challenges. Big black ants with pink flower petals bringing life to the dull orange patio,