:: You don’t have to believe everything you think ::

I was awoken sometime shortly after 3 am by a noise just outside the bedroom window.
Swiped away from dreams of counting M&M’s with Johnny Depp in the map room of a Spanish galleon just off the coast of Havana, it took me a few moments to orient myself to what was going on.
Dink-a dink-a dink-a dink-a dink-a dink-a…..
Then silence except for the sound of a distant dog bark.
Just as I was about to drift off to sleep again.
Dink-a dink-a dink-a dink-a dink-a dink-a…..
What was that?

On the boundary of our back garden, just behind our bedroom there is a tall iron security fence. Lately, we have been having some trouble with a group of local kids who have been scaling the fence late at night and using our garden as a short cut between where they are and where they should not be. The fence is slick, has little in the way of foot holds and much in the way of spiked posts. Climbing it is no simple task and this is made even more risky as they usually have alcohol on board.
So words have been spoken.
We have told them that they are trespassing, and putting themselves at a significant risk of impalement. Besides, it is probably quicker to hump up the street 50 meters and cut through an alleyway anyway.
And, in their defense, they have told us to go fuck ourselves.
OK…all sorted.

Anyways, tonight someone was outside running a stick or a bar or something along the railings of the fence.
Dink-a dink-a dink-a dink-a dink-a dink-a…..
By the time I had tumbled out of bed, hopped into a pair of pants and opened the lock on the front door, I had made plenty of noise to alert anyone outside that someone was up.
Besides as soon as I stepped outside, I triggered the security lights which totally blinded me anyway.
I padded across the grass over to the fence, and as my eyes readjusted to the darkness, I could see that they were long gone.

Back to bed.
I lay there listening to the night for a while before drifting off again.
Dink-a dink-a dink-a dink-a dink-a dink-a…..
What the frick…? These guys are trying to mess with my mind.
Right! Its on…I’m all over you like lubricant on a proctoscope my nasty little nocturnal nemesis’s.
This time I was out of bed in a split.
Barefoot, silent, night-shift ninja-nurse. Over to the door. Click off the security lights. Open the dead-lock with urgent quietude.
Across the lawn crouched low. Tangled in shadows. Flowing like inky mercury.

Nothing.
No sign of them.
I thought for a moment I could hear distant whispering, but perhaps that was just the wind in the bushes.
I could definitely feel some sort of presence just off in the corner-of-the-eye darkness.
 I withdrew to the side of the house and hunched down behind a low retaining wall. And I waited to catch them.
And I waited.
It was cold, and dark, and it was 4 am, and I had a cramp in my foot, but I sat there wrapped in stillness, determined that no-one was going to out psychologicalize me and get away with it. No way. No how.
4.05 am. Bugger this, Im going back to bed.

A short restless sleep broken by periods of laying there listening to the dog snoring and formulating masterful psi-ops missions against this new paedi-axis of evil.
At around 5.30 am I had to get up to empty my bladder. I had just stepped into our ensuite bathroom when:
Dink-a dink-a dink-a dink-a dink-a dink-a…..
What? What?!

Beside our toilet we have this tall metal bin that we use for storing rolls of toilet paper.
Trapped in the bottom of the empty bin was a large, Bogong Moth (Agrotis infusa).
Each time he flapped his wings against the bottom of the bin, the sound was magnified like a kettle drum: Dink-a dink-a dink-a dink-a dink-a dink-a…..

How often is it that we construct this totally fabricated version of what is actually going on around us. We weave together this nice little narrative from unexamined twigs and fragments  and then sit piously in its nest wasting our time being angry at other people for not living up to our expectations.
Oftentimes its not someone trying to piss you off, or ruin your day. Oftentimes its just a moth struggling with its own life.