Wildlife in One’s Bedroom

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I am a big city girl, I have seen animals in a Zoo, or in some homes in the shape of a cockroach, or an occasional lizard at the side of the road somewhere in the country side. I thought that’s how God created the world – people live in houses and apartments and animals, birds, fishes and insects live elsewhere. Well I was wrong. My first evening and first night on a Maldivian Island was an adventure as it is. Small island, very clear sky, stars that are so close you think you could reach out and touch them, peace and quiet and endless sea. My room, or to be precise my villa was huge and comfortable and very exotic too, it did not have a ceiling, it was covered with palm leaf roof. I thought it all was great until I realized that there is a huge gap under the door and the roof was not fixed to the walls at the corners and than I saw IT – a pink lizard which was so transparent that you could see its guts through. And then another one. One was sitting on the wall quite high up, another one was on the floor, quite close to my bed. And they were making those funny noises that sounded like someone knocking on the window. That was a long and sleepless night. We were watching us very closely and none of us moved. Just staring in each other’s eyes. It took me a week to make peace with it and after two weeks the pair of them had names. Soon I welcomed some strange spiders, some animals that looked like mice but I was told by locals that they were not mice. It was comforting. There were others too, all sorts of others that I even can not categorize. But very soon I figured out that they do not come close to humans. They were just around, passing through and minding their own business, having zero interest in me.

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