So, there’s this welcome sign on our cottage front door, a relic of some previous tenants that have long since moved on to other adventures. It’s pretty, and kind of green. A nice touch for a little one-room space that’s seen quite a few people come and go. There were a few less while we were in the middle of the pandemic, but the other day we opened up the cottage to visiting family members for two nights. We managed to get it looking quite fresh, even removing the giant black scorpion that had made its home in one of the corners.
It took around a week of mad cleaning, scraping, scooping, spraying, and wiping the endless layers of dust that seem to accumulate so quickly from cane fires, dusty roads, and the cement factory down the valley. At some point, we noticed a hornet or two staring at us from a wall or a window. A baby brown house snake appeared and then disappeared, hopefully to the garden. Thankfully we didn’t find mold or bigger slithering residents. And the windows opened up the whole place to a nice breeze and the beautiful smell of the basil outside in full bloom.
It was a wonderful weekend. We celebrated. We chatted. We hid from the massive rainstorm that brought about 45mm to the farm in less than two hours. Some of us whispered prayers of thanks under our breath that the storm only managed to find two drips from the ceiling. Nothing came crashing down. And then, we waved goodbye armed with lots of photographs, including one of a tiny little tilapia that an ecstatic three-year-old fisherman hooked.
Cleaning up just took a few minutes. And, we closed up the cottage again so that the next guests might have slightly less dust to contend with. For good measure, I sprayed the old ant nests we’d vacuumed up from all the inside walls. Then, I sprayed the welcome sign as an afterthought, just in case the ants had started eating through the wooden door under there… and, I had to run fast! As I sprayed, about thirty hornets angrily emerged to show me what they thought of my cleanup efforts. They didn’t get me. Thankfully, they hadn’t got my guests either. Still, the irony of that warm welcome wasn’t lost on me. Next time, we’ll at least warn our unsuspecting visitors.
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