This is one of those weird incidents that seem to happen only to me. Now, I am quite accustomed to lying awake for hours on end after watching a spook movie, too terrified to breathe, starting at every little noise, real or imagined. What I am not used to however, is coming from dead sleep to fully alert in one second, without knowing the reason. On this particular night, I lay motionless in the dark as my senses whirled, trying to figure out what had woken me up. I almost fainted when I felt something brush past my neck. Convincing myself that I had imagined it, I willed my heartbeat to slow down and almost fell asleep when I felt it again. Sheer terror of the unknown(especially cockroaches!) had me brushing violently at my neck and I cannot say I felt relieved when I heard a sickening plop a few feet away. Bang in the middle of the five hour power cut every night, with no torch or mobile nearby, I had no choice but to lie in wait , praying that whatever the thing was, it would curl up in a corner and go back to sleep. After a few seconds, or minutes, sleep overcame me and I slid happily into Morpheus’ waiting arms.

I don’t know how long it was before I was jolted awake again, this time I felt movement under my knee. By then I decided I’d had enough; being woken twice in the middle of the night warranted atleast some kind of investigation into its source(especially since the electricity was back :) ) Taking a few calming seconds to gather my ‘chi’ , I jumped out of bed with my best war cry, spinning around on one foot to catch the offending….ummm…being….expecting the worst. What I did not expect however, was the sight of a tiny little rat shivering with fright in the middle of the bed. Mortein Rat Kill, I grimaced in comprehension. The combination of the lethal poison and the equally lethal Leh winter forced the rodents out of the rafters into the relative warmth of my heated room, or in this case, my body warmth. Now I am not Attila the Hun, but my love of animals extends only so far and most certainly does not include rodents, cockroaches(ugh!!)and the variety of other creepy crawlies that hitched a ride on the ark. No, I did not enjoy it, but I had to do what I had to do. A slipper soon dispatched the little cretin to its keeper. Feeling a little like Lady Macbeth, I washed my hands(twice), remade the bed and went back to sleep.

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