Encounters

Over the past two days (Wed & Thur) there has been a whole series of new encounters. Lizards, for a start. Dozens of them live in the roof and during the day cling to the walls of the house. As you approach them they panic, scarper off across the wall and inevitably some lose their grip and come crashing down to the ground around your feet. Johnny says if you’re not careful they land on your head. Nigel has a particularly weird one in his office toilet. It’s a small lizard that lives perched on the door jamb and watches your every movement! I reckon it's a pervert, a voyeuristic lizard, but Nigel's grateful enough for it because lizards keep down the mosquitoes and in the dry season mosis are happy to hang around any water source including under the rim of the toilet bowl. Anything that prevents the possible outcome of that scenario is to be welcomed!

Apparently the cat is called Shelly. We've come to an arrangement, though if it were offered to the cat in the form of a contract there's no way Shelly would sign. Basically it works as follows. The cell is out of bounds at all times, which means that the cat flap stays closed and I have a cat free zone. Shelly can have the run of the main room but can only enter and leave as I permit. Shelly isn't coping well with the arrangement. She's clearly going through that difficult female adolescent stage of life. Her preference is to spend her days in the kitchen cupboards which she has obviously had the freedom to use for a long time, given her superb technique for opening securely shut cupboard doors. Suits me. There's no way I'd be putting anything in those cupboards anyway and should any other rodents try to occupy them I suspect Shelly would be an effective deterrent. Mind you, I doubt that there's much chance of her stirring herself sufficiently to do much else about the presence of a rodent other than spit at it, which is what she's been doing to me a fair bit. Told you she was clearly adolescent!

To next part.
To journal from Niger.