Last night, there was the sudden thump of something alive falling from above onto my bed a few inches from my pillow. In the darkness I couldn't tell what it was, but by its weight it seemed to be considerably smaller than a bird. Also, moving around it didn't make the fluttery bird noises with which I became familiar in Zanzibar. My guess was some sort of heavy beetle. With a bit of excitement I remembered the vivid green praying mantis the size of my hand that had landed on Abdul the Lebanese Merchant's shoulder in his mud-defeating 4x4 in Congo. It was delicate, awkward, and beautiful all at the same time, and I had loved seeing it pick its way around my arm before we set it back on its way out the window.
Thinking about the mantis in the dark, I listened to the whatever-it-was scrabbling around on the sheet, and wondered what it was. Hope, curiosity and a bizarre fear that it would go into my hair (and then never come free) made me sit up for my flashlight, and a moment later I had in the beam the most massive cockroach I have ever seen.
While it wasn't as big as the six-inch ones I saw in the Houston Museum of Natural History, it was still quite sizable - easily longer than one of my fingers - and big enough that I couldn't actually tell what it was at first. I had no term in my head to describe the shiny brown apparition that huddled by my pillow, petrified in the sudden spotlight. Not until it began to move, which it did almost instantly, fleeing in blind terror from my following flashlight, did I recognize that wild scuttle and identify it as: a roach. That understandably made the encounter much less exciting, and after it scrambled off the side of my bed to find a more peaceful corner of the room, I lost interest and lay back down. No mantis, nothing bizarre, just a roach.. adventure over.
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Hard to imagine a roach colony in your entanglement of hair. I'm glad he found a more peaceful corner to murmur.
ReplyDeleteOh I always am paranoid about bugs in my hair in such places. I don't know why.
ReplyDeleteCockroaches in bed are disgusting:
http://romyolivia.xanga.com/198239687/item/
(I don't think I've commented before - I think I talked to you about a year ago about whether to go on the trip? I am enjoying catching up on your blog. :) )
har har do roaches really murmur? Picturing a roach away in its own little corner, MURMURING of all things (malevolently??), is enough to send me into a fit of the giggles in this internet café whose proprietor, I suspect, already dislikes me.
ReplyDeleteand Olivia I must say reading your blog cover-to-cover (do blogs have covers?) last fall was a vivid education. Why is it that a roach in one's hair seems to be such a unique nightmare? Is it because it would be so close to your face but you wouldn’t be able to even see it to get it out? yeah.. I think I would probably rather have a roach in my food than in my hair.
I find it spectacular that adventures find you even in your sleep. Also, to continue with the mocking you for describing cockroaches as insects that murmur, I could send that 6 inch cockroach over to Africa for you if you wanted. It could do all the murmuring that it wanted to do in your hair and probably invite a few friends over as well.
ReplyDeleteEnjoy,
JD
you even dare to send me that six-inch roach and i'm gonna save it for your next visit and use it to give you an unpleasant surprise somewhere... under your pillow.. inside your backpack.. in your food.. just think of the possibilities.
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