My little brother has always had a peculiar relationship with animals. Being around him means you’re never the one in the room who’s most scared of whatever just made a strange sound.

At 3:45am there was a strange sound by my window. A sharp squeak just a few centimetres from my ear. It was loud enough to wake me, and I’m usually a heavy sleeper. So I lie there, in the dark in a foreign country, listening for whether the sound repeats.

I hear the sound again, but far away this time. Quietly and calmly I start to drift off again. Just as I’m about to fall asleep again, there’s a rustling from my curtain. Something is moving. Big enough to make a blackout curtain shift. I’m now wide awake.

I start shuffling around and making a bit of noise. If I make enough noise, maybe whatever is sitting in my curtain will slip away? No, my unwelcome neighbour instead starts squeaking back at me. So now I’m lying in the dark having a conversation with… something.

There’s no way I can fall asleep again without knowing what I’m dealing with. I get up, turn on the light, open the window and start shaking the curtain. The curtain rustles a bit more, and I think I see something brown move. Was it the animal or was it just the curtain’s shadow? Earlier in the day I’d seen both bats and rats.

I gather my courage and examine the curtain. But I can’t see anything on either the inside or the outside. I didn’t hear anything fly off or run away, but maybe I just didn’t notice it. I close the window and sit down. No sound and no rustling.

There’s an hour left before my alarm would have gone off. I’d been worried about whether I’d be able to wake up and be fresh enough. That’s not a problem. I’m wide awake and still have a bit of adrenaline in my blood. As I leave the room and take one last look inside, I see it. Right up in the corner of the room on the wall by the curtain rod hangs a 10 cm white/beige gecko.

It comes to me like a revelation. A memory from my childhood in a warm room at night, where my parents debated what on earth was making that sound. It’s something we’ve talked about and laughed about many years later. Geckos make these funny little but shrill calls.

In the morning I talk with my hostess. When I mentioned that I thought I’d had a bat in my room, she said I’d have to be very lucky for that. I think we had very different definitions of luck.

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