What I think about when I’m chasing mosquitos at night

I was speaking to a mate a while back about Murakami’s What I talk about when I talk about running and how it had a big impact on him when he first read it. And when he revisited it more recently, it fell a bit flat and didn’t spark the same flames as last time. But it got me thinking and so a new series is born. Read the first story in the series here.

It’s one of the worst ways to wake up. The high-pitched “zzz” starts in your unconscious brain and drags it to the precipice of consciousness and you wait. Does it disappear into a later problem, or get louder than a motorised bicycle? I’m not talking about a motorbike either but one of those Frankenstein’s monster backyard jobs where they’ve taken the motor out of a mower and rigged it up to an old mountain bike and sure it goes fast but there’s no muffler so it’s louder than your uncle late on Christmas day.

Somewhere along our evolution, mosquitos must’ve posed a big enough threat to lodge a trigger in our lizard brain. Why else would we pull ourselves out of the syrupy goodness of sleep to temporarily blind ourselves with the bedside light to find our way to the big light so we can chase a nearly invisible insect around a room? It doesn’t make any sense but it’s still better than the alternative fitful sleep, grabbing at the air near your ear, trying to get comfortable firmly tucked into the self-fired dutch oven as a voice in your head nags, “you’ll suffocate under here”. And then you give up, well you try to but you give up on that too. Because if you’ve reached this stage, you’ve realised you made the wrong decision. You gambled, you lost and now you have to get up and kill the mosquito. There’s no point chasing your losses, just get up, turn the light on and chase the bug as your lizard brain wants. Kill the bug. Eat the bug. Scamper under a rock, and wait for the big sky fire to return so we can warm up once again.

I live in Byron Bay and there are a few “paradise taxes” you must pay. Not real “tax the rich” taxes like there ought to be, just some imperfections on the side of a delicious mango you can very easily eat around. The first and worst is mould, which has been particularly bad the past three years thanks to back-to-back-to-back La Nina weather events making it wetter than an Otter’s armpit after hot yoga in the Darwin Zoo. Vinegar is the answer to the question nobody asked but does little to temper the astonishment at what gets mouldy. The glass on picture frames, books, clothes and fans obviously, lightbulbs and, I kid you not, even our dog one time (okay maybe twice). It’s difficult to not take that as a personal failure but he bounced back.

Another paradise tax is the two weeks around Christmas and New Year that overwhelms the town so badly that traffic (on the one road into Byron) backs up all the way to the highway and slows the highway speed limit from 110km/h down to 60km/h. Supermarkets feel like the Falls Festival moshpit, trying to find a park in town feels like trying to find a park at The Pass when the surf’s pumping, and trying to find a park at The Pass becomes a passive-aggressive gladiatorial battle as you wait for old mate freshly refreshed from his surf take fifteen minutes to dry himself, pack up and leave. Beaches become open-air nightclubs and hashtags bend under the sheer weight of the holiday pressure to cram the ‘gram. This is the most palatable paradise tax because it passes quickly and is avoided easily enough.

The most vexing paradise tax is common for tropical and subtropical areas but again feels personal – cockroaches. I seem to forget they can fly until the room fills with the terrifying sound of a small helicopter as a roach launches at my face. Just like the nocturnal toad plague, cockroaches scuttle out under the cover of darkness, turning a nighttime wee into an impromptu murder spree. Cockroaches are my least favourite tax because they tarnish everything they touch. All of a sudden the freshly-mopped floor is repulsive. The kitchen bench – sullied. The bin, still binny but grosser. We called out an exterminator at our previous house because the cockroaches were particularly persistent. He guaranteed his work and had to come back twice to re-spray, which he was lovely about and explained there was a plague going on and that it wasn’t us, it was Byron. Still, they’re so gross but part of living in paradise.

The other night, I was woken up by a command to kill a baby cockroach clinging to the ceiling above our bed. Squinting into the dark at this bright, unexpected and unwanted consciousness, I grabbed my phone, cranked the brightness until my phone warned me it was too bright and made my way to the toilet to get some toilet paper to remove one dimension from the cockroach. On my way back, I flicked on the big light, grabbed a pillow that’d fallen on the floor and threw it up at the bedhead and stopped. The pillow scuttled a prehistoric proportioned Huntsman spider up across the wall centimetres from my partner’s head. This thing was so big the wall creaked when it moved.

I used to have a phobia of spiders – full gastro-puckering, shudder of fear and terror when I got too close to one and it moved kind of phobia. Then, one time, I was squished into the backseat of a car for a 10-minute drive to the beach. I was in the back right seat and less than a minute in, noticed an enormous huntsman spider poised at the top of the window about 20 centimetres from my face. I was close enough to see the hairs between its eyes. I mustered previously unimaginable courage to sit with the fear and its spider for the entire car ride. I waited patiently for the other two back seaters to get out so I could shuffle across the seat, away from the window and the stained seat. I got out and announced to all within earshot what I’d just achieved. “You did not,” someone said, “there’s no way.” Everyone went to gawk at the spider and my heroism was certified. Ever since then, I’ve been bolder with spiders.

I abandoned the cockroach hunt and went to the kitchen to find a container large enough to capture the spider. I thought about getting my son’s blue shell paddle pool but it was full of wood (and probably even bigger spiders) outside. I opted for the largest tupperware available, a deep, glass number. While I was overcoming my phobia of spiders, my goal was to be comfortable enough to catch a huntsman with my bare hands. I’ve since abandoned that goal simply because they hate being chased as much as I hate chasing them and their skittish zig-zagging makes a clean catch next to impossible. So, I reasoned, it’s better to use a tupperware and catch the spider without harming it and ruining my underpants, than squish it for the sake of my ego.

My partner zig-zagged out to the couch and I crept closer to the spider holding the tupperware like a shield. Closer. Closer. The tupperware was hovering, shaking, five centimetres from the wall. I crept closer and plunged it against the wall – success. It pinged around all four walls of its prison. I jostled it a little until it was on the base of the tupperware so I could slip the lid in behind it. Slipping the lid feels like the tablecloth pull in reverse with much bigger consequences. This particular lid had little fold-down flaps on all four sides and they effectively turned the tupperware into a sieve. Just like Jurassic Park predicted, the dinosaur escaped, time-warped around the side and lunged at my hand. The loud voice in my head told me to be calm, that the spider couldn’t hurt me, to just make sure it didn’t gallop under the bed where I couldn’t reach it. But the intrusive thoughts won, my lizard brain hissed and yanked my hand away from the glass tupperware, which hovered for a bewildering second before smashing on the floor.

‘How’s it going in there?’

‘Good. Not great.’

‘Have you caught the spider?’

‘Yep. Once. It broke the tupperware. I’m going to need another.’

Silence.

‘I’ll get it.’

It scuttled out of sight behind the bed. My heart sounded like the Jumanji drums and I went for the vacuum cleaner. I figured the head with the rotating brush would mince it so opted for the long bottle-nose dolphin nozzle. I took two steps before I admitted the spider was never going to fit through there.

I remembered an even bigger tupperware – plastic this time – tucked away in a cupboard, it was palatial compared to the last and deeper too so there was more distance between me and the dinosaur. Spidersaurus hadn’t gone into proper hiding, so I was able to herd it back up the groaning wall. Mark my words, in the future, spider scientists are going to prove that Huntsman can effectively see into the future using some kind of quantum bullshit. Because it’s just not possible it could’ve moved so far so quickly. I caught one and a half of its legs with the side of the tupperware. My heart sank. It was fine just a little less limby. I released it in our veggie patch out the back and I’ve actually seen it twice since because there aren’t that many huntsmen you can hear moving before you see them and even fewer that move with a limp.

On balance, I think I’d rather chase huntsmen around the room than mosquitos. If you were swimming in the ocean, would you rather discover there’s a shark in the area or Irikanji jellyfish (1 cm³ jellyfish with enough venom to make your heart stop)? Both can kill you but one you can see from across the room, the other could creep up and slap you in the neck without you even knowing. So next time you’re facing off with a predatory spider, be thankful it’s not a mosquito and until then, buy a bigger tupperware.

And that, in part, is what I think about when I’m chasing mosquitos at night.