Critters

This blog post is dedicated to the memory of the three geckos who have tragically fallen to their deaths in my latrine hole. Rest in peace, geckos. You are gone but not forgotten.

I recognized long ago that my house is an ecosystem unto itself. Within it, various bugs and beasties are born and live and die. And that’s fine, as long as they don’t make a mess or eat my food or crawl on me.

Today has not been a good day for critters. After days of hearing the telltale noises of termites, I discovered a notebook (blank, thankfully) whose pages had been utterly destroyed by the little bastards, and so they met a fiery death on my trash pile. A few hours later, I noticed that a particular corner of the living room had a rather unpleasant odor, and discovered the body of baby gecko no longer than my little finger under a 15-liter water jug.

a (living) gecko of comparable size

In the year and a half I’ve been in this house, I’ve seen a small sampling of the wildlife Cameroon has to offer. Aside from the aforementioned termites and geckos, there are a number of spiders, most of which I allow to live since they eat unpleasant things like flies and mosquitoes. In a fit of paranoia one night in Ngaoundere, I researched the various arachnids I’d seen in the house and deduced that most of them were wall crab spiders, which are harmless to humans. I also discovered that the black widow has a lesser-known and less lethal cousin, the brown widow, which can be found in Cameroon, specifically, in my kitchen. (For this reason, I always have a can of Raid in the kitchen.)

Did you know that scorpions are also arachnids? I can attest, having counted eight legs on the two specimens I killed in my living room.

But the worst kind of visitor is one with no legs at all. One day a few months ago, I walked into my living room to find a small snake (about as long as my forearm) in my living room near the front door. It was black, and though I can’t be certain what species it was, I knew that black mambas were native to Cameroon, so I tried to stay as far from my uninvited visitor as possible. Somehow I had the idea to blind it with insecticide, which actually worked, and once the snake was disoriented, I got it into the front yard using a hoe, found the largest rock in the yard, and threw it at the snake’s head. Cruel? Yes, but in my mind, necessary.

At first I thought my neighbors would be rather nonplussed about the snake, since they didn’t seem bothered by any of my previous critter encounters, but my friend Pepito was shocked to find a dead snake in my yard. I don’t remember the exact exchange, but it went something like this (translated into English for your reading pleasure):

Him: Did you know there’s a dead snake in your yard?
Me: Yes. I killed it.

Him: You killed it?? Why didn’t you ask someone to kill it for you?
Me: There was no one around.
Him: Wow, you’re brave. Even I would have run away.
Me: (glows with pride)

And, scene.

Despite all of this, I must say that aside from the occasional bat infestation or rogue scorpion, I’ve been pretty lucky. I’ve occasionally heard volunteers complain of houses crawling with cockroaches or having to keep food in Tupperware so mice can’t get to it. And while my latrine is home to a number of cockroaches longer than my thumb, they rarely leave their hole, presumably because they know I will show them no mercy. My relationship to the critters now is kind of like that of stereotypical college dorm roommates: As long as they don’t touch my stuff or get into my space or wake me up at some ungodly hour, I mostly live and let live.