I Don't Sleep Alone

I don't know what it is, but I don't want to sleep with it, ever again.

Nope, I haven’t changed my mind about having a fling with the widower in the village. I slept with something from a completely different species. I woke up in the middle of the night and felt something. I reached down and grabbed what looks like a variation of a hermit crab, on steroids. It was about the size of a navel orange.

I wasn’t happy to find it in bed with me but was too tired to get up and get rid of it, so just tossed it outside the mosquito net. How it got inside the mosquito net is a mystery. Apparently, I didn’t do a very effective job of tucking the net between the foam mattress and the cement floor.


In the morning, I thought I must have been dreaming. Until I realized that my friend had crab-walked back over to my mattress. I took a picture of it, then went to get someone braver than I to take it outside. It was one thing to grab it when I was half asleep, I didn’t want to do it again in the full light of day when I could see how ugly and big it was.


By the time I’d dragged one of the guys back to my room, it was nowhere to be found. He sent his sister to help me look for it, but it seems to have made a clean get away or was too well hidden for us to find. I nonchalantly said “Well, at least it can’t hurt me. They don’t bite, right?” Seems they do. And, according to the 18 year old, a bite could kill me. I think she was kidding.


If you happen to recognize it and know that it could be dangerous, please let me know. I’ll search a little harder. Just in case, I’m being very vigilant when tucking in the mosquito net.


Hello, again. It’s now a couple of days later and I’d like to report on more sleeping companions. Yesterday, it was two lizards. I like having them in my room since they eat bugs. I relate to the sound the gecko makes the way I relate to the sound a bug zapper makes. But having them crawl across my body and in one case, my face, while I’m sleeping is rude. And because I have the mosquito net, the one I tossed off my face, bounced back. At moments like that, I pretend that I’m watching my life as a movie, with Meryl Streep playing my role. Or perhaps Bette Midler. I bet she could throw a lizard with gusto.