Our room in the Sahara was actually surprisingly nice and comfortable, which felt like a small luxury after a long day of traveling. There was just one problem: the windows did not have screens.

Normally, that would be easy enough to solve by simply closing them. Unfortunately, it was so unbelievably hot that closing the windows would have turned the room into an oven. So our choices were basically to roast with the windows shut or leave them open and invite whatever happened to be living in the Sahara Desert to come spend the night with us.

This would have been slightly less concerning if, earlier that evening, we had not already met one of the local residents.

Right outside our room was a dung beetle.

And this was not some tiny little bug that you could pretend not to see. This thing was big enough that I immediately noticed it, remembered exactly where it was, and apparently assigned it a starring role in every irrational thought I was going to have for the rest of the night.

By the time we were ready for bed, it was still brutally hot, so there really was no choice. The windows had to stay open. I ended up lying on top of the bed in just my undergarments because even clothing felt excessive at that point. I did not care if anyone happened to walk by and look in. If someone saw me, good for them. I was trying not to die of heatstroke in the Sahara.

Unfortunately, once the windows were open, all I could think about was that beetle outside.

I knew it was there. I knew there were no screens. I knew there was absolutely nothing stopping it from crawling straight into our room if it felt like it. And of course, my brain did not allow me to imagine the most likely scenario, which was that the beetle had absolutely no interest in us and was probably outside doing normal beetle things.

Instead, I began imagining every possible way this night could go wrong.

I pictured it crawling across the floor, then somehow finding the bed, then crawling onto me while I was asleep. From there, my imagination really started putting in overtime. What if it crawled into my ear? What if it crawled across my face? What if I fell asleep with my mouth open and woke up with a giant Sahara dung beetle in it?

Once that thought entered my head, there was no coming back from it.

So while Sarah was actually trying to sleep, I basically appointed myself overnight beetle security.

Every tiny noise got my attention. Every shadow near the window looked suspicious. Any movement anywhere in the room immediately became, That’s it. It’s in here.

I spent the entire night lying on top of the bed, sweating in my underwear, staring toward the windows and waiting for an attack that never came.

By morning, I had not slept at all.

The beetle never entered the room. It never crawled onto the bed. It never went near my ears or my mouth. As far as I know, it spent the entire night outside completely unaware that I had turned it into the most dangerous creature in the Sahara.

So in the end, the dung beetle slept better than I did.

The room was comfortable. The windows were necessary. The beetle was harmless.

My imagination was the real problem.