Battle at the beach

(Monday 21 March 2011, after a long shower, Puerto Varas, Chile) Continuation from Couchsurfing and bed-dwellers The plan was to spend a few days alone, in Paula’s great little beach cottage until she joined me that weekend, just relaxing and thinking over my trip. Just being alone. But on night one, as I lay in bed and started this thinking and alone-being, I found that I was not in fact alone. The bed was FULL of fleas. Having sprung out and examined my clothes and body for unwelcome company, I eventually went back into the bedroom. Needless to say, I pulled up the bed. Her room was by far the nicest place to sleep. I stood in my underwear in the middle of the house, feeling lost. I stared at the big white bed for a while… Nothing moved… I decided I would sleep in my sleeping bag on top of the bed. The fleas were all inside the covers, surely. So I climbed into my sleeping bag and jumped diagonally onto the bed simultaneously pulling it up tightly over me so nothing could get inside. Plus, I lay with my head at the foot of the bed – that would confuse them.

I woke up over and over that night. I could hear them jumping on the sleeping bag near my head. They had found me. I was so tired I went back to sleep. There was one on my face! I bolted up and brushed at my face furiously. I turned on the light but I couldn’t find a flea anywhere. I went back to sleep. Around 3am I woke up scratching my legs. They were in my sleeping bag.
I felt sorry for dogs… I was so tired. I kept telling myself that there are people in the world who live on the street, who have to deal with stuff like this every day. Summing up all my willpower, I ignored the itch and slept.
I woke up to a bite late in the morning, and ripping open the zip of my sleeping bag, I saw a flea jump out onto the bedspread. I caught it and killed it with relish. Looking down, however, I saw my stomach and thighs were absolutley covered in a cloud of red spots.

Still, I decided to spend most of the day lying in the middle of the bed, reading, or using my laptop. Well that’s what the fleas thought anyway. In reality, it was just a disguise while I lay in wait, stopping every time I felt anything to see if I could catch the culprit. In my panties and a top, and surrounded by white bed, I was cold, but at least I could see them approach. Before my evening walk, I had squashed at least 10. Surely that was most of them.

Standing in the kitchen cooking supper, I found one in the waist elastic of my pants. I gave it a good squish. When I opened my fingers, it hopped away. It hadn’t died. Shouting expletives I walked to the bathroom and looked myself in the mirror. This was so ridiculous… The top of my bum was so itchy. I turned and lifted my top to examine my reflection. It was worse than I had imagined. I was suddenly overcome with itchiness. I scratched and scratched and scratched until the skin of my lower back was hot red and my myriad bites swelled white. I was desperately itchy, and itchily desperate. I had a number of moments like this in Paula’s house; where I cried out in anguish for her to arrive so she could tell me what to do, or so I could leave. For a few minutes, the beautiful brown beach with its brown birds and blue waves were not enough to console me. But I soon regained my composure. And then the battle recommenced.

Night 2 I slept on the sleeper couch in the living room. It was just as bad; I got savaged. That day I walked up to the main road where the little store directed me 10 minutes down the way to a larger little store that sold flea powder. I dosed everything: between each of the six blankets on the bed, the pillows, I took the sleeper couch outside and any clothes I had worn in the last two days and covered them in the smelly cream-coloured powder. I found a couple of fleas in the process and managed to catch them. Even engulfed in flea powder they weren’t dead, but I assured myself that they had slowed down. Whenever I caught one, I rolled it between my fingertips til I had it against a nail, then I squished it with another nail til I heard it pop (very gratifying) or it broke in half, and then to be sure, I washed it down the basin. After a while, I could recognize a flea and its brown flea body on any surface. Freckles were no longer a confusion to my flea-honed vision. No matter what I was doing, my skin was on alert. Eventually I could tell to ignore it when it was just a piece of fluff or a hair caught in my clothes, or when it was an old bite that had started tickling again. (Days later, I have definitely lost this ability and just writing the word flea, I’m convinced I have them crawling all over me!) I was so perfectly atuned to the feeling of a flea on my flesh, feeling it move, feeling it bite. I became an expert at locating it exactly where it was hiding before it changed sites; in the seam of my jacket near my elbow, inside my sock on the back of my calf, and then catching it before it had a chance to hop away. I killed so many that day. Surely that was most of them.

I double-checked the sleeper couch and my sleeping bag before I lay down that night, they were flea free. I don’t know where they were coming from, but still, they came. I don’t know if fleas can live in your hair; it didn’t feel like it, but they were coming from somewhere and I had a host of new bites on my face. And on my hands! Do you know how itchy itchy bites are when they’re on your knuckle, between your fingers, on your palm? They were still moving on my legs. I had to do something. I was never gonna get to sleep. The warning on the flea powder said not to use it directly on skin, so I resisted. Instead I took off my pants, opened them and poured it down the inside of the legs. I filled the hood of my sleeping bag and shook it out. The air was thick with the smell of flea powder. Antihistimine tablets would have been perfect, knock me out and stop the itch, but I didn’t have any. So I took 2 myprodol with a mug of hot milk and prayed that I didn’t die of overexposure to insecticide.

The evening of Day 3 I found out that Paula wouldn’t be coming after all due to work. But I could stay as long as I liked and whenever I wanted to leave I just had to drop the keys off with the neighbour. I took the first bus the next morning. It had been a laugh really. And I’d seen three gorgeous sunsets and had a couple of lovely walks on the windy brown beach. But I was absolutely covered, absolutely covered, in flea bites. Spotty. With bites spread across my skin like a flock of brown birds against a blue sky, all suddenly rising as you approach. Like a particularly big flock. Flying dangerously close to one another.
I left the brown beach behind, and the brown bodies of the flea survivors (who were bound to be more than I imagined, even after all that death). And the bites, which I could not leave behind, are really not that itchy anymore. Especially now that I’ve finally finished talking about them.