Meeting of minds

While living in Edinburgh the amount of wildlife present in the city was entrancing. Foxes, Badgers, Hedgehogs, even the occasional Deer. The only creatures to be seen in Stirling are rabbits and the seemingly solitary grey squirrel in the gardens over the road. Querétaro is an abundance of the weird and wonderful insects and lizards only seen on television in the UK.

And of course rodents.

I've no problem with the smaller and furrier of our earths co-inhabitants, most people seem to feel the need to kill them upon sight, something I'm not too keen on.

While living on Morrison Street in Edinburgh, I awoke one night with no real sensory or physical reason for my stirring. I just opened my eyes and there directly in my line of sight was a mouse. I should point out I sleep on the floor, albeit on a mattress on the floor, just never seen the point of spending large sums of money to be slightly elevated while sleeping - digression.

So there, sitting on the floor, illuminated by the moonlight bleached orange streetlights and looking directly at me was this tiny 'intruder'. We stayed like that for all too short a time, my mind filling with questions as to how was it I came to be woken at that very instant, what was this little visitor thinking, who had more right to be there, was it actually looking at me and more to the point, directly at my face, my eyes, or just staring into amorphous space.

Ten years on and I still ponder over that encounter. If ever there was a time that made me believe there's more to "Life, the Universe and Everything" than what we perceive through our supposed five senses, it was then. I just hope should a similar event occur my guest isn't of the exoskeletal variety.

Yeah, we get scorpions round these parts.