Monday 10 January 2011

Put a saddle on it!

Today's blog dare is a really fun one, the ugliest insect I ever saw. I refuse to have a picture of the evil things on my blog. End of.

When I was 20 I went to Fiji on a missionary challenge for one month. We started with one week in the mountains half way between Sigatoka and Suva at a conferece, and then spent 2 weeks working with street kids in Suva, we had a few days either side to relax and recuperate.

What I discovered in our dormitory at the conference was cockroaches. Coming from Tasmania I had limited experience with these beasts, but I knew one thing. They were the devil's work. An insect whose footsteps you can hear, has to be the devil's work.

Now perhaps its the passage of time, and like the one that got away, these beasties have got bigger and bigger in my head, but I swear if you got six of these things in a row, and hooked up some harnesses, they would have been just as effective as any reindeer. Hideous.

One night we went up to bed, there were six of us in this room. I went in first, and ran out and screamed, another girl did the same thing. We huddled on the verandah refusing to go in. But we were rescued. Brigid, a tiny New Zealand girl, she must have been 5 foot nothing and the build of a child walked into our dormitory, looked the beast head on, grabbed the Fijian broom (like your stereotypical witches broom but without the handle) let out a huge Maori cry and launched said broom at said beastie.

Well, no one told us these evil (and I use this word in Aussie vernacular so as not to offend) bastards could fly! As the broom flew towards it the cockroach swooped, landing in Brigid's hair, whose bravado momentarily left her, and she ran screaming, and huddled with the rest of us.

As we were cowering, three huge Fijian men came striding up the stairs, ready to take on our attacker. "Right, where is he?" We whimpered, pointing to the cockroach, now sitting on the top of the window, laughing at us (ok the ability of cockroaches to laugh is debatable but I am sure that's what it was doing). Manassah (you couldn't make it up) a trainee doctor and about 7 foot tall glared us, walked calmly to the cockroach, scooped it up in his huge hands, and launched it out the window.

He looked at us with a mixutre of annoyance and pity, and sent us all to bed. He thought the cockroach was some sort of deluded would be attacker, not a, supposedly, harmless insect.

We all slept with one eye open. From that night on I took no chances. I sprayed the room thoroughly with Aeroguard every evening, on top of and underneath the mattresses!

1 comment:

  1. UGH! My skin was crawling reading that! Hate the things! *shudder*

    ReplyDelete