Mother Nature's Children

There is always some creature annoying you in Nakhon Phanom. Whether it is my cat Bak Mo who wakes me up at 2 in the morning by hanging outside my window by the screen, stray dogs that chase you down the street on your bicycle or frogs that hop over your toes during the rainy season, there is always something moving and always something there with you. You are never truly alone.

Aside from the creatures, there are the critters; hoards of ants carrying dead cockroaches across the kitchen floor in the middle of the night and even larger cockroaches scurrying across the sidewalks when the town quiets down and the sun stops shining. Then there are the flying insects named "maeng mao" that infest around lights at dusk and within hours had died along the street sides causing passing motorbikes to slide along the hundreds of dead bugs.

My house is right in front of a forest, outside the bright lights of the city and very close to a pond. We own a convenient store with our garage door open 14 hours a day, from dawn until dusk. Mosquitoes flood in, following you through the house so they can suck your blood and leave you itching for hours, days and weeks on end. As I sit by my computer I am forced to not only wear insect repellent cream, but long sleeves and pants; as I have come to realise, insects in Thailand are invincible and impossible to repel. I sit with my electric fly swatter "Zap Zap Zap Zap" and the dead bodies fall to the ground until I need to sweep them up with the broom and dustpan. Suzanne now officially hates my house. On days when the insect repellant has run out, I take safe haven in my bedroom, where I have a bedroom door that shuts MOST of the buggers out. But though I have a door to keep out the mosquitoes, I cannot keep out the beetles, ants or geckos that somehow find their way into my room, into my suitcase and then into my pile of clothes. I am no longer surprised to find ants crawling up my arm or on my bed and pillow.

I find it hard to be frusterated with all the creepy crawlers in my bed because as Suzanne once reminded me, "The ants were here before we were."

"Even should we find another Eden, we would not be fit to enjoy it perfectly nor stay in it forever." - Henry Van Dyke