Midnight intruders

About two weeks ago, around 4 in the morning, I awoke to the sound of what I assumed was a rat rustling around my bungalow. I sat up and saw a human silhouette behind the bamboo screen that separated my living space from my balcony. It is strange how eerie the human form can appear under the wrong circumstances. Somebody had climbed up on my balcony without alerting my landlord's dogs. I started shouting obscenities in English, and the person jumped to the ground; I could hear that he was still down there, so I kept shouting until he ran off across a thick field to the left of my bungalow. This awoke my neighbor, who shouted out to see if I was all right. Only one of my landlord's half-dozen dogs started barking. As I explained to my neighbor what had happened, we heard a bunch of dogs start barking at the far end of the field, right where the intruder would have emerged onto the road, and my neighbor said he had seen a car drive past along the road just before. This sort of thing is not unusual, according to a number of people I have talked to, although the motives remain unclear. The intruders are supposedly either poor and looking to steal something, or are hoping to spy on couples or women asleep. I went back to sleep, and the next morning it all seemed very strange, as if I had dreamed it, but my neighbor confirmed for me that I had actually woken him up earlier that morning. Apparently nobody bothers to call the gendarmes or municipal police when these things happen.

What is most unsettling is that I "lost" two lighters that were on my balcony over the past two months. I thought perhaps I was just forgetful, or they had been borrowed by my neighbors without asking, or picked up by inquisitive mynas, but I now am pretty sure I was visited at least three times in the middle of the night.

Last weekend at the station there was more theft: after a party on Friday night, some people came by with a crowbar and stole some wetsuits, two iPods, and a digital camera from a dive locker. And the next night, a prescription mask was stolen from the back of a Land Rover (which doesn't lock).

As of last Friday, I've now moved onto the station; my new digs are only about 200 m from my old ones, but are much nicer, and lock. About two minutes' walk up the hill are some Glochidion manono plants, which I discovered last week the morning before I moved in, so I can do pollinator observations easily at any hour of the day.