I spend the evening (Friday night) at a gathering at the Australia High Commission. The Australians and Kiwis have a lot of parties and know how to have a good time. No good food this time (unusual) but an endless supply of beer and a lot of important contacts to chat and network with.
I finally return to the campsite about 11PM, later than usual. I turn on the fan and crash.
I am really pooped so I am sleeping pretty good. Am I dreaming? Maybe, hard to remember.
Then...
Owww!!! Holy Crap! It feels like there is a knife being driven into my hand. I try to brush "it" off, whatever "it" is, but there is nothing there. By now I am beginning to enter the realm of consciousness and find I am standing by my bed vigorously shaking my hand. On with the light. Nothing in sight. I strip the bed, and easy job since I have only a sheet, no blankets. After all this is only a campsite, not a viable home. Nothing there. "It" has made its escape.
I rush to the kitchen for my bush knife. This is a significant knife. It has a 24 inch blade. I loan it to my landlord so her son can trim the hedges with it. I also have a file, so the blade is far from blunt.
Why do I need a bush knife at 04:30 in the AM of a Saturday morning? Because this is my preferred weapon for battling molokous. Molokous are the giant tropical centipedes that are but one of the diverse pests that infest my campsite. Readers of this blog will remember past references to my previous traumatic but up-till-now painless encounters with these nasty beasts.
I poke around with the knife. Under the bed. In the dirty cloths on the floor. No dice. No molokou. I cock my head and listen. Can I hear the little bastard laughing at me from within the termite infested walls? Maybe. Or maybe its just the scurrying of a mouse.
I go to run cold water on my hand. There are two holes, viper like, in my palm. Each sports a tiny drop of blood. Mine.
I look down as I wash. All of the rat poison is now gone. Eaten with no apparent effect. I've been spending a small fortune to reduce the number of rodents that share my campsite. I have learned that anything edible, such as crackers or bread, must be stored in the icy (refrigerator) or they will be gnawed open. I hope that removing the readily available blood supply offered in the form of the rodent hoards doesn't make the Dengue Mosquitoes any hungrier for my blood. Perhaps I should get a hairless cat and offer it as a sacrifice to the bloodsuckers?
These random thoughts help me to control the pain. The bite of a giant tropical centipede really hurts. There is a video on the web of one striking a mouse. They strike just like a snake.
Why won't they eat MY mice? Perhaps they do, maybe that's what attracts so many of the venomous arthropods to my campsite in the first place.
As a rare individual who has now been bitten by both a rattlesnake (while in Texas) and the Centipede I would have to say that this Tongan critter hurts a lot more for the first couple of hours, but in the long haul the Texas bite was nastier.
Tomorrow is Sunday here. Maybe I'll ask the Fifekau (minister) to give a special prayer. "Please Lord help me find a tolerable place to live soon." Maybe if I give him a good mat and some tapa he would put in a good word?
3 comments:
Wow, I watched the video of the centipede eating the mouse. How do the locals keep from being bitten? I wonder if you put Vick's vaporub all around your bed if that would stop them. A thick line of it that they would have to touch to cross it. I hope you find a better place to live soon. Jeanne
The locals watch for them and kill them. In Ta'anea I saw whole cans of Mortein Pesticide sprayed on them, then someone goes and gets a shoe.
Chickens eat them if they find them. perhaps that is one reason the centipedes like the houses. (Or at least the houses that don't have chickens wandering inside, some houses do.)
Hey John! I've enjoyed reading your blog & keeping up with everything there ... I can only imagine how completely frustrated you are with your housing situation!!! I'm sure you've gotten a ton of advice from others already...but, have you already tried getting Toma (if he's still the safety guy) to come out and do a complete safety assessment? Or, have you thought about just finding a new place yourself and then letting the chamber know who they should be paying going forward? Several volunteers had to do this in our group (of course, all of us ET'd too...maybe that's not a good sign!) ... anyhow, I feel for you - I WISH they would have put you into the good house that I finally ended up in (2 months after swearing-in), it was fantastic! Very palangi friendly - I only had two molokaos in the month that I lived there...and truly fantastic landlords! It's connected to the house Soraya lives/d in...good luck John!!! ~ Carrie Schlafmann
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