hola, isabel

Beelzebub Sent His Special Devil to Me

In return for my wife and I watching Baboo so The King and Isabel could go out and see a movie, I asked Isabel if I could put in a guest appearance on her blog. She has always been fiercely secretive of her blog and had never yielded to my requests for the address.

And that is why I had to scour the internet until I found it. She was none to fond of the idea of my guest appearance on her blog, but since she loves The King so much and wanted to be free to have a date night with him she acquiesced

In thinking what I should write in my first, and probably only, blog post I pondered upon the fear that Isabel feels when thinking about having me do a guest blog and it brought me back to one of the most harrowing experiences of my life…

During my time living in Jamaica I spent a couple of months on the south coast in a town named Old Harbour. My compatriots and I were renting out the second story of this great house. It had multiple fruit trees in the back (banana, passion fruit, avocado, pineapple, and breadfruit if I recall correctly), many large windows that let amazing amounts of sunlight in, a crazy landlord (this is a story unto itself), a maid to wash our clothes, a HUGE Jehovah Witness training compound down the way (we’re talking acres and acres folks), and a vintage typewriter with which to write letters with.

(me, enjoying a wee taste of a chicken foot)

Oftentimes in our travels around the country we would throw caution to the wind and pick up oh-so-tasty food from the street vendors. Jerk pork, jerk chicken, fried plantain, fried chicken and rice and beans, fried breadfruit, aki and fish, chicken foot stew, mannish water, oxtail, curry blue crab, and cow cod soup to name a few of my favorites.

One early morning the wind threw caution right back in my face…and it hurt. I was woken up at 4:30AM by my body and spent a fair amount of time reading a magazine in our restroom. I had the wooden slats on the window open for obvious reasons. The magazine must have been quite the read, I dozed off in a couple minutes.

I was roused out of my sleep by a gentle, repeating whooshing sound. It must have taken me a bit to come to my senses, because the next thing I knew I was starring in disbelief and horror at a full grown bat flying through a hole in the screen on the window.

The next 5 hours (I’m sure it was only moments) were spent in a wild, flailing, yet stationary battle with the “rat bat” from hell. (They have moths that are so huge in Jamaica that they have to differentiate between “rat bats” and “bat moths”.)

I wish I could better recall “the battle” but all that I remember is swinging (read madly flailing) for the fences with the rolled-up magazine while trying not to slide my dirty parts all over the bathroom. The battle seemingly ended with me landing a solid blow to the body of the spawn of Lucifer and sending it to the floor to the left of me. The carcass landed in a narrow channel between the toilet and the bathtub.

As I sat there gathering my senses and wondering what in the Lord’s good name had just happened, the devious devil launched its second offensive. After no doubt using its evil senses to ascertain that I was no longer paying close attention to it, it flung itself into the air and started circling my head tauntingly.

The rejoining of our battle was fierce indeed, despite the brief nature of the conflict. After seeing that I would not be conquered, or cower down, the coward fled back through the hole-ridden screen and into the early dawn. After catching my breath I completed the motions of my necessary business and left the bathroom.

Unfortunately for me our floors were tile so I woke up everyone in the house with my vigorous stationary acrobatics and they were all waiting for me in the hallway when I emerged. (I’m certain their sly grins were due to the pounding and grunting that was coming from the bathroom.)

As for the fate of my nemesis; my best guess is that the “rat-bat” spent the rest of the early morning searching for a herd of swine.