A not-so pleasant surprise
So there I was…
Just back from the bar.
Knocked back two glasses of wine.
Fairly relaxed.
Ready for a nice night of sleep.
It was only 12:20am after all and the last couple of nights I had been up till about 2 am working on my thesis.
So I was ready for sleep.
Outside my door was a cockroach. No biggie, I see them all the time, and outside my room, on the ground is fine.
So I enter my room and see another scurry away out from a bag I had on the floor to under my shelves. Now I am restless. These things are big. They are not the little Mexican la cucarachas….these babies are EL cucaracha. They are gigantic. I grab the bottle of Raid (bug-killer), and notice I have only about 3 sprays before it is out. To grab another bottle, I would have to leave my room, lock it, go to the main house, unlock 3 sets of bolts, find a bottle, lock up, go back to my room unlock, and pray the damn thing is still there.
Better yet, I take my 3 shots. I use two of them to spray underneath the shelves, hoping I have reached the damn thing and he is withering away, upside-down, and won’t have enough life to make it back out. But with my luck, I can still hear the sucker crawling around under there.
Fine, I think. I will sit at my desk and work on my laptop typing my thesis until he comes out again. Then I can use the one last spray I have and kill him! Just as these morbid thoughts creep into my mind, a cockroach, larger than any I have ever seen or imagined, crawls across the photos on my wall, not more than 2 feet in front of my face. Like a small alien with antennae longer than its 4″ long body, it scurries across my photos as if they are trash. Now what. Cuss words start rolling through my head. And more cuss words. And more. At this point, I am pretty sure I am verbalizing the cuss words, itching every part of my body, and slowly reaching for the sandal on my foot…my only defense (except of course the one spray left in the can, which at this point I have forgotten about). I grab the sandal and take my best shot. I miss completely and the thing goes running out of sight.
And now I am supposed to go to bed?
I need the other can of Raid in the house. So I go through the whole locking and unlocking procedure, get the can and go back to my room, hoping to find my fearless enemy. The new can I just got is empty. My luck again has failed. I am back to where I started with one spray left in the other can. This time, if I find him (and I think there were at least 2 in the room – but the Big Kahuna is the one I was most worried about), he is dead.
So I go peering around, poking at various things on my desk, standing completely still for a couple minutes hoping to trick this guy, and as I turn around, again I jump out of my seat. There he is. Casually scenting his way over my stack of t-shirts. If I spray him now, all of my clothes will smell of bug spray. I don’t care. I get the can. I aim. I fire. He flips over on his back, pedals his legs as fast as possible, and doesn’t have time to escape before I land the cap of the bug spray on top of him….a bold move on my part. I then take the entire stack of shirts along with the cap containing Mr. Ruined-my-whole-night-thanks-alot and I placed it outside.
I am still itching, still cussing, and still wondering how many more are in my room. I have no Raid left. My courage is shot and my bravery is exhausted. I want nothing more than a pleasant night’s sleep. But instead I got a not-so pleasant surprise.
An excerpt from Adventures in Africa; Blog 2006
