I was staring at the ceiling. Both of my roommates had long since fallen asleep but my mind was still filtering through all the thoughts that the day had prompted. A small sound disturbed me from my thoughts, a scratching sound. "Rats!" I thought. Now I'm not afraid of rats, I am aware that they cannot hurt me, so, with the sound now identified, I returned to the swirl of thoughts in my head. But in the midst of this chaos, a small voice came to me, screaming, "the coffee!" I snapped out of my thoughts and returned to the immediate major problem of the 8 bags of coffee on the ground, the same ground that the rat was on. Do rates eat coffee? I don't know. I think rats eat everything. I knew I had to act. So I grabbed my flashlight and pressed it against my mosquito net, shining it toward the coffee, looking for the red pin-pricks of the rat's eyes. But I saw none. The scratching had stopped. The rats must have gotten savvy and hid from the light. So I hid the light until the scratches were heard again. After the scratches became steady, I snapped the light up and watched as a huge tail, an inch in diameter, slithered down the backpack and hid behind the coffee. "This is no rat." Just then I heard scratches from the corner of the room. The beam of light jumped over to illuminate a large snake. This is good news actually. In PNG, snakes are either big or deadly. So big is good. "But snakes don’t make scratching noises!" The snake that my beam was focused on began to crawl toward it's friend. It's legs moving rapidly. Now you may be thinking, as I once naively did, that snake + legs = lizard. But this is not the case. Lizards have bodies and then tails. Snakes have much less obvious transition between these body parts, and I assure you, it was not a lizard. It was a snake with legs.
Suddenly, the first snake began moving again, the beam snapped back to observe it's progress. It's tail must have gotten snagged on the empty bottle of Coke on the floor, because as it retreated to the shadows under my roommates bed, I watched the bottle of coke being slowly dragged under the bed until it disappeared in the dark. The giggly sort of fear bubbled in my throat (which I stifled for the sake of my slumbering friends) and I thought about how cheesy that scene would be in a movie.
The second snake progressed around the perimeter of the room and I was thrilled as he approached my bed, because then I would get a really good view of him (in the safety of my mosquito net). So I watched him approach, walking with the front of his body and slithering with the back. I watched him crawl under my bed and then jumped to the other side of my bed to watch him crawl out. But he didn't.
After several minutes, I came to terms with the fact that he was staying under my bed. I returned my attention to the ceiling and at that moment, wished more than ever that I had my cell phone. So badly, I wanted to text my team leader and ask her if snakes with legs could hurt me.
I practiced how I would tell this story in Tok Pisin until I fell asleep.
Epilogue
The next morning, the roommate who's bed the snake hid under was packing to go spend the weekend in Madang. She gasped. Another woman asked what the problem was.
"I think it's a really big gecko."
"Oh don't be a baby!"
A few minutes went by and my roommate spoke again.
"I really don't know what to do with this!"
"What are you talking- Oh dear."
The massive snake had coiled itself in her suitcase. Nationals were asked to come and exterminate the intruder. They informed them that this was not a common critter.
I should be so lucky.
No coffee was harmed in the making of this experience.
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