The alarming incident of the cockroach in the night time
on Kasia in Calabar (Nigeria), 12/Dec/2011 08:57, 34 days ago
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Cockroaches have made an appearance my blog before, in a slightly bizarre was I losing my mind in having a conversation with one fashion. This time I was not having a conversation with a cockroach, I was being rudely awoken by one on a night where I was not getting much sleep anyway to the sound of scuttling in my room. Normally my fan is on at night and as such I probably sleep on blissfully unaware of the beasties that prowl around in the dark but because it’s cold at night due to harmattan at the moment my fan is off so you can hear every little noise.Anyway there I was finally drifting off to sleep somewhere around 4am when a nasty scuttling noise brought me back round like a flash, then it got a bit closer to my bed, then it sounded like it was actually in my bed!? No surely not, but I was sat up in a panic with my reading light in hand when I realised that a roach was climbing up my mosquito net, I made a funny sort of a‘meeehhh’ noise and tried to bat it off from the inside with said light. Hardy little buggers though aren’t they and he took a few bashes before he fell between the bed and the wall and quick as a flash (or a Kash) I was out of the netting the other side and reaching for the can of raid. My lungs may not have thanked me but I was ever so relieved when he came to a sort of half dead stop, just close enough to the edge of the bed for me scoop it up with a hastily devised cockroach scooping device (Notebook and old plastic bowl for catching leaks in rainy season). Not bad for four in the morning eh?I don’t think I have ever been so pleased for my mosquito net, apart from maybe that first night in Calabar. After disposing of the interloper I obsessively checked to make sure the net was tucked in very securely just in case there were any more lurking around waiting for me to turn the light off before striking and got myself back into bed. Weirdly I managed to sleep. Maybe it was the high concentration of Raid in the room?