Noises Under the Bed

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It was only my second night in Sri Lanka and I was laying in bed nearly crying out of fear. Granted, a somewhat irrational fear, but it was fear indeed. It was incredibly dark in our room save a sliver of moonlight that shined under the crack in the door. Miss C, age 1 year 3 months lay sleeping soundly in her crib nearby. I had been struggling to fall asleep for over an hour. Just as I started to drift off to sleep, I heard a distinct shuffling sound coming from somewhere in our dark room. My eyes shot open, and I shook Joel awake. “What was that sound?!”I asked in a loud whisper, still trying not to wake the baby.

Before I finish telling the story, I suppose I should back up a bit and first fill you in on why I was laying in bed in fear in the first place. Earlier that same day, Miss C was napping and I heard her waking up. I went into our bedroom at the beach house we were renting for the week. This was a very rustic, open air sort of house with lots of holes and spaces for all sorts of creatures to come in and out of the house, and plenty of nooks and crannies for things to hide. I had already been startled a few times by geckos and giant cockroaches, but having lived in Bangkok for two years at this point, it wasn’t anything I wasn’t used to. On top of that, there was a random dog that liked to sleep in our room. However, we had enticed him out the first night with snacks and then made sure that we kept the door to our bedroom securely fastened so we wouldn’t have to chase him out anymore! So, that issue seemed to have been settled.

As I lifted Miss C out of the crib and turned around to leave the room, I noticed something moving near a small hole at the top of the ceiling near my bed. At first I was sure it was an earthworm, but as I continued to watch it, I realized that it actually was a baby SNAKE! My friend came and looked at it and confirmed that it was a snake. I didn’t really know what to do, so I just stood there as the snake inched it’s way back into the ceiling.

Snakes are one of my biggest fears, and I swore that I would never sleep in the same room that I had seen a snake in. I guess never say never right? So, on that night, I lay in bed, petrified that there was an entire nest of snakes in the ceiling above me, and I had just heard a crazy noise from the dark!

My brave husband, using his phone as a flashlight, took the five or so steps to the light switch and flipped it on. Not sure what to expect to see when he turned it on.  We were confused to see nothing unusual in our room. Whatever had made the noise sounded large, and it sounded as if the sound was coming from the floor. Joel looked around, behind furniture, in the attached bathroom, virtually everywhere. He was about to give up, and perhaps thought I was over-reacting a little bit. “Check under the bed!” I said to him in a voice that could somehow qualify as both yelling and whispering – one of those things you must be a parent to understand, baby was still asleep afterall.

As soon as he gazed under the bed, he started laughing. “It’s the dog!” he said. We both burst into laughter as a sense of relief swept over me. The dog! But, how did he get in? We had been very intentional about keeping our door locked all day. We went to bed a bit puzzled at how the dog could have gotten in, but relieved that it wasn’t something more frightful.

The next morning, after a few cups of coffee to make up for the restless night, I headed out to buy some groceries. Joel stayed back with Miss C who was taking her first nap.  As he was sitting on the porch of the beach house, the dog came running up. Without even blinking, it took a big leap and went right through the bars of the window into our room. The mystery had been solved! And, we realized that there was likely to be no way to stop the strange dog from sleeping in our room.  However, I was okay with that. At least with the dog under our bed the rest of the week, I slept a little easier hoping that he might keep the snakes away!