The Motorbike, the Jackal and the Leopard Part 2

The hotel bungalow is in the middle of the Sinharaja Forest Reserve, a Biosphere Reserve and designated World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Never dreamed I’d be sleeping in the middle of a rainforest. It’s cooler than on the coast and it’s eerily quiet too. My room balcony overlooks a misty green paradise of a time and place we long to remember, and here finally, maybe, I can rest and sleep. I see there’s a gorgeous mosquito net, just in case.

My heavily comprised nervous system checks out the bed. This is going to be good. I make my way down to dinner, chat to some nice Dutch folks, sit in silence for a while and allow myself to fold into lying down. Clearly this is my blessing; after two weeks of sleep deprivation inside a fan-assisted sauna, here I am in a heaven on earth.

I settle down, drifting, peaceful…

And then there’s a blood-curdling howl. Right outside my room.

Do you know when something fills you - beyond your own strength? The howl’s a force of energy, of light and darkness, and it enters me. It wants to take hold of me, possess me. It goes right in deep, right down to my guts.

No!

I resist. This isn’t happening. This will not happen.

But the howling persists.

You know when you’re trying to sleep and there’s something that won’t let you. And you’re just too exhausted to tend to it. You know that. I try to dismiss it but…

There it is again. A long, sweeping, aggressive, almost mystical howling. Whatever’s creating it is no more than ten metres away from me, surely.

I lie still for a while longer, heart racing. Then I get up and go outside. I’m scared and irrepressibly brave all wrapped up in one.

Outside my room I’m greeted by a small dog, who sits benignly in front of me, almost looking as if she’s waiting to be stroked. She looks up at me.

The mystery is solved. The answer is clear. I need look no further.

This little beast is to blame.

In my exhaustion and frustration I project everything onto her. You little minx, who do you belong to? Why have the hotel guys left you here? F**king hotel, how stupid to leave a howling dog in this beautiful, peaceful place to prowl around at night and wake up the guests. It’s idiotic. It’s insane. What are these stupid hotel people doing?

I scan the hotel bungalow grounds. Quiet. The dead of night. In my frustration I text the hotel telling them there’s a howling dog outside my room and I can’t sleep.

“I’m very sorry sir, I’ll send someone over to check right away.”

I go back to bed. I’m shaken, I can’t settle and I wrestle for a while with a sense of universal injustice. For my pains I experience a pathetic, semblance of sleep.

In the morning after a delicious breakfast, I’m in reception early, and there, lying on her back with her legs splayed open in the middle of her sleeping paradise, is that little bastard mongrel dog.

Then I meet my room neighbours, a Sri Lankan Family.

“Did you hear the jackal last night?”

The jackal?

“It was very loud wasn’t it?”

“Oh… the jackal.” They smile at me, as does the sweet hotel guy who appears.

“We’re in the middle of the Rainforest Sir”

Yes, we are indeed in the middle of a Rainforest.

Something’s been waiting outside my door for some time, but I haven’t been ready to open it. I haven’t been awake enough to face that music. I’ve been busy working with my pain. And that’s been necessary. And so, as God does sometimes, as life will, she knows I’m nearly ready, so she shouts a little louder. In fact she howls.

Maybe he’s ready to listen now. Can’t let him sleep, there’s not that much time…

There are calls. Life calls us, all the time. God wakes us from our slumber. The sun rises. Our souls long for our new stories to unfold, again and again.

What’s been waiting for me? There’s always a fear to face.

Are we brave enough to surrender to the calls?