The past few nights I’ve been woken up by strange noises in my room. Now if you’ve seen my room you will recall that is quite large, thus making it difficult to pinpoint the exact longitude and latitude of any noise at any given time. Anyway, I have this faux fireplace, whose purpose completely eludes me (because faking a practical and utile device is, well, stupid; obviously a topic for another time) since it cannot actually be used to build a cuddle-with-your-lover or lay-on-a-rug-and-read-by-the-fire fire. This tragedy of course has forced me to use this space to store some things that I don’t use on a day to day basis but might soon, like this scrap of cellophane that once wrapped a gift I received, some dried rose petals that don’t smell like roses, and a pinwheel. Yes, a pinwheel.
Well, in the middle of the night before last I heard the pinwheel tip over and I attributed it to too strong air con or you know, just the law of gravity. Random things often go tipping in the night. Surely you’ve experienced this. I didn’t think anything of it and attempted to fall back asleep, but just as I was reaching the final stretch to REM I was awoken by more rustling “around the room.” Annoyed, I got up from bed and scoured almost every possible surface with my 3 a.m. eyes. Of course, I found nothing that could have possibly made a noise so I got back into bed assuming that whatever was partying in my room would leave me alone tomorrow.
Last night I went to bed having completely forgotten about the mysterious night mvr&shkr but was again woken up at 3 a.m. to some gnawing from what sounded to be the giant suitcase I had filled with stuff I would be taking home with me next week. And although the contents of this suitcase are mostly useless things like this long sleeve tie-dye shirt (THAT I RECEIVED AS A GIFT….question mark) and a pair of tacky white pillow soled sandals in the style of SAS (of my thrifting), I would still be pissyfaced if some little critter was making itself comfortable in my shit. I laid in bed with oh-no-not-again thoughts but was aware that I was obviously susceptible to false processing of the senses at such a time. I was hopeful that perhaps my ears had deceived me and the noises were actually coming from outside, like maybe there were pigeons perched on my window sill (and this I actually thought was a very plausible idea because earlier that night I had gone to class and the woman whose flat we had held our session in had tied a plastic bag outside her window that shrumpled with every breeze in order to scare pigeons from nesting on the window). This I found not to be the case however, when I heard more noises coming from the back of my room, possibly my closet, and having lived in the country most of my life, my ears have grown accustomed to recognizing the sound of a mouse. So I jumped up from bed and armed myself with the most suitable weapon that could be a found—a large empty 1.5 liter water bottle—and headed to my wardrobe. And I’m in there, poking around the stuff at the bottom of my closet hoping to find the little critter, preferably frozen in hamburger-eyed fear like a deer caught in headlights, but of course, the dim bedside lamplight and the thud of my relaxed “comatoes” had scared it off and my plan to catch the sleep disturber was foiled. Defeated, I began considering other dippy possibilities, like, maybe a baby frog had hopped its way indoors when my flat had been opened for maintenance work earlier in the day. I needed to be creative but realistic, and as scary as it was to think about it, I decided check for a bat because they’re unfortunately quite common in Haifa.* Such thoughts were obviously influenced by 3 a.m. brain fog but I checked my ceiling anyway and of course, there was no bat to be found.
*Earlier that night I was walking home with someone who said that a bat had attacked him on that very same path we were walking on just a few nights prior.
So, fed up by two nights of disturbed sleep I decided to check my email because hey how much more productive could you be at such an hour? Well, to my pleasant surprise, my uninvited guest decided it would be cute to leave a little something on my desk. Earlier I had placed a very delicious perfectly yellow and red streaked apple on my desk for the next day’s breakfast but friend over here decided to munch on it, leaving shreds of apple everywhere: on my keyboard, notebooks and for the lolz, even my laptop mouse. Such an act pretty much just screams, “I am here to have fun until you catch me, good night and good luck” and it has become apparent that the only answer is to wage macabre war to reclaim my space. I have since been furiously plotting ways of getting this creature out of my room for good. Ideas thus far: learning rat echolocation, buying thermal imaging goggles (and gluing them to my sleep mask), setting booby traps or installing my webcam as a SPYcam. If you have any suggestions I would be glad to hear them. In the meantime I am just WAITING for that which shall remain unidentified to leave droppings on my favourite blouse and let me tell you, if (and when) that happens I will throw down Tekken 5 Kazuya style kombat tactics. Things will NOT be pretty.
…And thus begins my blog.
