Have you ever smelled a banana flower? It's quite surprising. I know of no other flower like it. A smell from chemistry lessons, perhaps something like ethylene or toluene, I can't quite remember. Fragrant it is not but distinctive it is. Pass a banana grove on a sultry evening and it almost smells like something is about to go rotten. Not quite unpleasant but edging in that direction. It lures an animal that comes to visit very quickly, usually very briefly and always at night. A banana's flower is built for bats.
But not the bats that sweep through our garden ten minutes after sunset. Those are on the hunt for insects and travel onwards to silently swerve their way across the many fields. I love that pulse of bats, but especially love knowing about it. The nectar-drinking bats come a little later, although, they might be sharing their day-caves, three kilometres away. They all elude me in the same teasing way that tweaks inquisitiveness and reminds me of my ignorance.
The sun falls then the night does and the garden takes note. At dusk the sparrows quit their chipping and the frogs begin their barps. And it happens so quickly. That photogenic "golden hour" squashed into a few tropical minutes. Get distracted after 5pm and it might be dark when you look up.
There was a time when that would have been risky.
Usually, I retreat inside once the sun slips away, drawn by the need to feed and wash the garden from my fingernails and hair but also driven by the mozzie whine that makes me slap the side of my head. But sat inside there is still connection. Sounds not heard in day-light still reach me. Recently, I have been listening to a soft falling tone, "whooo". Ten seconds later, again, "whooo". I know which tree it's coming from, fifty metres away. I can even hear it through conversation or music, although others struggle to do so and don't always believe me. We all have different priorities, I guess. I saw it clearly once and don't need to again. With nightfall, hearing becomes seeing and either way there's an Oriental scops owl in the garden.
There is also the "chonk...chonk...chonk" of a large-tailed nightjar. While the hollow bouncing of a ping-pong ball that we also sometimes hear is from an Indian nightjar. Knowing such things strips a thin layer of mystery away from the darkness and gives it some shape. Then comes the bubbling gargle of night-herons boasting of being able to see in the night, while the screeching of a flying fox sounds so unhappy like a toddler who drops his ice-cream. The night garden is a soundscape and really we should be resting our eyes. Fat chance.
Back before we left the natural world dusk was a more significant time. Nightfall was the right way to describe it, as day-animals like us have good reason to distrust the dark. Now we can love its calming, end-of-day, time-to-relax signal: eat, leave the dishes, switch on the tv, pop a can of cold beer. But once it signalled a need to get safe and be wary of unseeable danger. A contradiction of sleep or safety. I assume we solved that paradox collectively.
For many of us that unseeable danger is perhaps still there but it doesn't come from nature any more. Our fears are people.
I can still feel the natural version whenever I take the trash out after dark or night-stroll around our big pond for the thrill of it. I am in no danger of getting eaten and I have never felt a risk of human intruders but... Have you ever noticed how easy it is to miss a snake on a path at night? You carry a torch and think you are focused on the ground in front but there are distractions and suddenly it's there too close and you don't understand how it got there. I love that. We have resident green pit vipers and an occasional cobra coming through with the chance of an even more exotic krait but somehow I trust them. Even knowing that people do die from stepping on snakes at night. Together, the snakes and I will avoid it. Somehow. The risks for both of us are too high. This is my faith. It arrives with the bats and the owl that says "whooo".
Written for the excellent CreativeGarden challenge. Try it!
