Z Papaya Chronicles - Things that Go Bump In The Night

Living in our apartment is akin to living in a treehouse. With its bamboo ceilings and open-to-mother nature design you never who will be visiting while you lay snuggled in your bed at night. One of our first nights here I had the pleasure of sharing my bed not only with my husband, but with a tropical cockroach as big as my head. Okay...I'm exaggerating but it was pretty darn big (see picture below courtesy of my sister who placed a tea candle by it for perspective) and it felt even bigger when it decided to take a stroll along my arm. As I screamed and jumped saying something is crawling on me, Mr. Granny Pants, in his understated way said "yeah, it was huge."  Gee thanks Sherlock. At this point I bolted out of bed and began wacking the bed with my pillow. Unfortunately Roxy was on the bed at the time and took it personally.  We couldn't convince her to get back on the bed for the rest of the night. In the morning I found the beast lying on its back, its little legs all a twitter. We, and by we I mean, Mr. Granny Pants, scooped up the little bugger and set him free so that he could continue his reign of terror.

We also share our home with geckos...lots of little geckos and even have a family of them hanging around. Geckos are your friends.  They control the mosquito population and pretty much mind their own business. That is until you turn out your lights and go to bed. Then the get up to all kinds of no good. They eat holes in the bananas (see pic below), gnaw their way through the plastic bread bag and happily chew a hole right down the middle of the bread loaf, play soccer with the tomatoes and even manage to knock an almost empty nutella jar out of the cupboard. And after they have feasted to their little hearts content its time to get down and dirty  on the curtains (Third pic below, Rated AA, courtesy of my sister again). Ahhhh Gecko love. Yes, we now have bins and tuck our munchables safely away at night.

At this point you are probably wondering why the heck we don't just get a mosquito net around our bed. Life is all about adventures and I guess we just like living on the edge. That and the likelihood of me getting up in the night to pee and entangling myself in the darn thing, hence bringing the entire roof down is also a factor. Hasta Luego.