End of day. Dusk emerges like a stealthy lover to embrace the garden. It’s a magical time -- a transition between waking and sleeping, reality and dreams. The colour of the light shifts to lavender, deepens, begins to fade. For a few minutes everything becomes very still as the creatures of the day prepare for sleep and the creatures of the night wake up… and realize they are hungry.
Down by the bamboo grove I put the pigs to bed. They accept a piece of bread as I rub their hairy heads. Grumbling a little they flop down in the cool dust, dainty feet crossed and ears already twitching with dreams of breakfast. Their link in the food chain is the Bali Buddha Café and leftover bagels. In the next paddock, the geese honk loudly as they lead their babies into the shelter. Their warning is heeded; down on the undercliff, the pythons and civet cats that might have fancied a gosling for supper make other plans.
Life is all about food, really. Around me, countless creatures are positioning themselves in the food chain tonight and putting each other on the menu. We are all something else’s lunch.
A mosquito hovers too close to the web of a St Johns’ Cross spider. The silvery web vibrates in the last of the light as the insect struggles to escape, and the landlady strolls out from behind the heavy white zigzag X in the centre of the web to survey her next meal. A few side orders are neatly bundled nearby. She won’t go hungry tonight.
It’s dark now. As I near the house a snake slides across the path ahead of me, more sensed than seen. She’s on her way to the pond, a smorgasbord of frog spawn, dragonfly larvae and other interesting snacks. Frogs rarely last more than a night or two here and tadpoles seldom attain full froghood. But this critical information somehow never gets passed on to the rest of the tribe. Unlovely toads continue to make their way to the pond, have raucous sex among the lilies and produce strings of gleaming black eggs. A few days later the eggs are gone and the frogs too, their voices absent from the night symphony until the next rain brings another foolish lover and the fruitless cycle repeats itself.
Bats flicker in the darkness, too fast to see. There must be at least three species in the garden, their high calls and squeals are different. Some eat their weight in mosquitoes each night. A few months ago others pollinated the flowers on my durian tree, and now two dozen spiky fruits are ripening there. Another species gorge on a ripening papaya, weakening the stem so the heavy fruit crashes to the grass. It explodes open and the insects soon find it. Then predators find the insects. And so it goes.
I go to bar the front gate for the night. On the wall near my hand is a scorpion about 5 cm long, holding an insect between its crablike claws. It seems wrong to kill it just as it’s tucking into dinner. I spare its life, and a few weeks later when I’m in the bamboo grove, its cousin stings my foot. The pain is intense. Without hesitation Wayan crushes the creature with a stick. It must have a special niche in the food chain, though -- nothing will eat its carcass. Two days later, when I can walk again, I bury it under a lemon tree.
The house lizards nudge their way across the walls hunting the small insects that shelter between the bricks. A huge tokay lumbers out from behind a picture, his prehistoric skin an unlikely turquoise with red spots. When a large beetle with yellow markings lands nearby, the tokay’s eyes gleam with anticipation. He freezes and the ungainly body tenses. The lizard strikes like lightning and half the beetle disappears into his wide mouth. He sits there for a bit as if considering the situation, while the long antenna of the luckless insect wave beside his face. Another few gulps engulf it, and the tokay retires behind the picture to digest his meal.
The dogs seem to be the only animals that don’t kill strictly to eat. Their hunting instinct is hardwired into them; when they’re in chase mode they hear and see nothing but their prey. We’ve lost count of the number of Pak Mangku’s chickens that have met an untimely end in my garden and I’m afraid there have been a few cats as well. They are both excellent ratters. Tonight I open a low drawer to find a fat rodent sitting there. We are both too astonished to move for a moment; in that split second of hesitation before it leaps for freedom, Daisy the dachshund has snapped its neck. She kills for sport, not for hunger. It joins the scorpion under the lemon tree.
On the grass today, a wasp has stung a spider and drags its paralyzed body to a quiet corner. She will lay her eggs inside the spider and when they hatch, they’ll consume its still-living flesh until they’re ready to hunt for themselves. An unpleasant position in the food chain.
A clumsy rhinoceros beetle at the end of its life span bumbles into the kitchen wall during the night. When I find it in the morning the ants have already eaten it clean, nothing but its crisp exoskeleton remains. It seems like a very tidy solution. I thought nothing would eat the bitter ants until I saw the pigs licking them off the wall of their paddock one day.
The garden hums with life as I prepare for bed. Frogs, bats, lizards and less noisy creatures are checking out the night’s menu. I give thanks for my privileged position at the top of the food chain and drift into sleep as the ongoing drama unfolds around me. It is, after all, a matter of life and lunch.
