Watch keepers

Rice harvester next door

When we were still living in Chiang Dao, we met a French woman who had been looking for a place to live for a few years. At first we thought that it would apparently be very difficult to find a home here, but when we toured around with an estate agent for an afternoon, she told us (privacy is not an issue in Thailand) that one of her requirements was that there should be absolutely no noise from neighbors or other surroundings. He knew such places, but was afraid to recommend them to her. Much too dangerous for a single Western woman, he thought.

Those looking for silence should not be in Asia, we have heard someone say, and for Thailand that is indeed largely true. Music regularly blows over from the village, depending on the wind direction you can hear traffic on the road to Lampang, you hear the brush cutters, the train horn, sometimes a tractor, passing mopeds and at the moment it is the time of the rice harvest and the rice mill is buzzing the background. And if someone has died or is it a Buddhist holiday, you will hear the monks. It was always more or less the same in the places where we lived or stayed on holiday. We are used to it, we don't mind it, and there are still many moments when it is wonderfully quiet here.

Silence is a subjective concept, by the way. It may be that what we experience as a wonderful silence means a sleepless night for a visitor from the Netherlands. Because there is always the sound of crickets, cicadas or frogs. That can be quite harsh at times, but it's so ubiquitous that we're used to it and don't notice it anymore. So we are not losing sleep over that.

Nevertheless, we have had a few broken nights in the past week. This was due to a pack of dogs that roamed the area and had chosen a neighbor's sala as their nightly base. About every hour or so the dogs made themselves heard by arguing with each other or by crying plaintively. Our own dogs would fly out barking loudly and we would sit up in bed.

At first we tried to solve that by closing the door at night. Now that our dogs realized they couldn't go outside, they indeed didn't react so violently to the wild group anymore. Only around 3 o'clock they started to make soft but oh so annoying complaining noises. They are not used to not being able to go outside to relieve themselves and there was a great need. So we still had to get out of bed.

It was now clear that the only way to solve the problem was to chase away the pack of wild dogs. But how? We could ask the neighbours, but are afraid that they will do so in a less animal-friendly way. Fortunately, the internet offers a solution for everything. We found a few videos with very unpleasant noises for dogs (and, as it turned out, for ourselves). They turned out to help. As soon as the barking and howling started at night, we turned on such a video and immediately the dogs took off. After the 2nd night they stayed away for a night, but after being beeped again the night after, they have now been gone for a few nights. We can leave the door open again at night.

Mouse nest in the drawer

However, an undisturbed night's sleep was not yet a fact. True, the barking had stopped now, but instead the gnawing began. It seemed to come from just behind my head and was too loud for a wood-eating insect to produce. I inspected the space between the mattress and the wooden bed frame, but there was nothing there. I lay back down and hoped it would pass, but the grinding only intensified. I got up and tried to locate it, but when I shone a light the gnawing stopped. In the end, the conclusion was that the creaking came from a small drawer block. One by one I opened the drawers. When I pulled the bottom open I was, fright oh fright, jumped by something unknown. It jumped to the ground through my knee and disappeared. I couldn't see what it was, but that became clear when I pulled the drawer completely out of the block. Between the ammonites that still have to get a place in the mosaic work around our house was a couple of newly born mice. Mother mouse had the papers that state who in the Netherlands has incorporated the other half of the relevant stone in her nest. A beautiful destination indeed, but our love for nature does not go so far that we leave undisturbed a mouse nest behind the head of our bed.

Running mice and rats are among the wake keepers anyway. We don't thank them for the fact that they plunder birds' nests and pee in the attic, and if there was any sympathy, they have lost it by saddled me with Weil's disease. They are part of life between the rice fields, but we try to keep them away as best we can.

Rat caught

One of the most comical keepers, although we can't really laugh about it in the middle of the night, is the lapwing. It makes a nest on the ground and as soon as there is danger it flies up to distract a potential nest robber with a lot of noise so that it does not find the nest. In itself, that would not wake us up, but unfortunately dog ​​Yindee has made a connection between passers-by on the road and the lapwing's alarm call. As soon as the lapwing is heard, Yindee flies barking to the fence. Also at night. The barking dog is in itself a threat to the lapwing, which takes it a step further and thus creates a self-sustaining alarm system. Very funny, but it could all be a bit softer. We have been able to reasonably teach that to Yindee in the meantime. The lapwings have to make it very colorful these days to get her to bark.

We got help from nature itself to contain the worst wake keeper. I'm talking about the parties, which can only be successful here in Thailand if karaoke can be done. I don't think I have to write anything about how that develops as the evening progresses and the bottles of self-distilled whiskey are empty. However, since the corona outbreak, those parties are over. In recent weeks, some music has been blowing in from one of the surrounding villages every now and then, but a party late into the night has not been there for a long time. Fortunately, if that ever happens again, we still have an effective remedy at home: earplugs.