Monsoon brings the critters out of the woodwork.  I’ve dealt with visitations from earthworms, dreaded mosquitoes, military-grade cockroaches, and the occasional freeloading lizard.  I like the lizards, though – they remind me of the color-changing pet anole named Jonny I kept as a kid.  He lasted some 5 years in captivity, and quite sadly died a bachelor.  Requiescat in pace.

Jonny was one badass reptile.  He would have torn the two-inch, coffee-colored Oriental cockroach I walked in on in the sitting room late Monday night limb from limb before cracking open its thorax with his jaws and feasting on it until morning.  India’s lizards have few fans.  When I tell Indian folks that I used to own a pet lizard, the reactions range from bewilderment to revulsion.  I don’t kill these bugs when I find them, though – in a way I am their guest, too.  I’ve seen many adverts for exterminator and pest control services throughout the city.  With 18 million human residents and probably billions more inhuman, I can’t see how these businesses could be at all effective.  But maybe that’s why they remain in business - the more you look for these varmints, the more you’ll find.

While ricking to work a couple weeks back, Abhilash told me an interesting about a famous Bombay snake-catcher named Salim.  If you find a snake in your home, you can SMS him on his mobile (!!!) and he’ll come right over to capture the snake.  When he has amassed enough snakes in storage, he takes the whole lot out to the forest and releases them.  He charges nothing for this service, but his reputation is such that the city supports him to some degree.

Moving lower on the food chain: fat, grey-brown rats scurry along the garbage-packed railbeds of Chinchpokli and Bandra stations, and in and out of the rain gutters in Powai.  They are both fascinating and horrifying to me.  Two years ago my roommate in Pittsburgh and I caught a pair of rats in our apartment after having sighted them and evidence of their extended nesting several times.  At the time, I likened the infestation to terrorism.  Here, it’s surprisingly easy to get used to seeing them darting around the street or station, though I wouldn’t want to come into contact with one.  We came close Wednesday night – Jeevan and I went to Pizza Hut (and yeah, I am aware of what cognitive dissonance this implies in light of my past commentary on the pervasiveness of the MNC, thanks :) in Harinandani Complex.  When we went to leave, a rat slightly larger than the ones that terrorized my apartment sat perched in her path to the driver’s side door of her little Maruti Alto, gnawing on what appeared to be a wad of styrofoam.  It wouldn’t even move until we got within about a foot of it.  Days ago, I was surprised by a guinea-pig sized specimen with salt-and-pepper fur that leaped out of a rain wash in front of Laxmi hotel and charged at me full-speed before veering away.  Strangely, I was more bemused than panicked.  Again, this past Tuesday, I stopped at the ticket window of Chinchpokli station near work in order to pick up the second-class pass that Abhilash had helped me to apply for my first day or so here.  I was having a tough time explaining to the clerk in gutter hindi/english that I was here to pick up my pass, and that he already had the photograph that he repeatedly asked me for.  Suddenly, in the window behind him appeared a rat, winding its tail lazily around the wrought iron bars.  Seeing this distracted me to the point where I trailed off and took a step backward.  At this point, an older, sari-clad lady walked past the window with a handful of documents, paying no more attention to the rat than if it were the office mascot.  Shaking my head in amazement, I validated my remaining railway coupons at the stamp machine and started back down the ramp to the platforms, resolving to try again tomorrow.

So expect the unexpected.  I find myself ever so gradually reverting back to an attitude I learned as a Boy Scout years ago: an acceptance of and respect for nature, though tempered with enough fear to stay clear of higher-vertebrate power trips.  It comes in handy during chance encounters with God’s creatures small and smaller.