Sounds of the night

Sipping a cocktail on my veranda. Photo by David Lansing.

As I write this I’m sitting on the veranda of my cottage, sipping a g+t and catching the late afternoon breeze off the ocean. A tree frog slowly hops across the lawn, stopping every few minutes to check for bugs or insects in the immediate vicinity. A dozen or more chickens are pecking at the dirt and the grass, watched over by a rooster who sits like a pasha in the garden next door, flanked by a couple of red and orange ti plants.

I take a sip of my drink and listen to the birds making their little clucking noises, feel the breeze on my face. Very relaxing. Every once in awhile the rooster will make his rooster noise, which, I’ve come to realize, is not really a cockle-doodle-do sound at all. More like an er-er-ER-er.

There’s no air-conditioning in my cottage, of course, which is just fine. Who the hell needs air-conditioning when you are living in a cottage just feet away from the beach? Last night I lay atop the sheets on my bed in the darkness just listening to all the noises in the air: the breeze teasing the palm fronds, the distant sound of waves breaking against the beach, and the irregular chirp of a gecko crawling around on the ceiling above me. It was the gecko’s chirp along with the soft whirr of the overhead ceiling fan that eventually lulled me to sleep.

It’s amazing how peaceful the distant sound of waves and the whirr of a slowly-revolving ceiling fan can be compared to sleeping under the strange, foreign chill of a hotel air-conditioner.