So, growing up in Australia bugs and insects were pretty much a common occurrence, and the icky ones may give u a fright, and then you whollop them one (cockroaches) and you keep going on like nothing happened.
Living in China for 7 years and not seeing any kind of insect or bug, accept for the intrepid mozzie who came up the lift or the drain pipe to the 12th floor, had made me desensitised to creepy crawlies in our house.
When we moved to Malaysia, I knew that these critters would be entering our world again, as it was a tropical climate. The mozzies are nothing new, flies are fairly minimal, the ants I’ve come to live with. I guess if we had a cleaner then there wouldn’t be this symbiotic relationship, between messy us, and cleaning ants. But the bug I’m not back on board with is the roach…
The one on the balcony made me scream, and I flushed it away down the drain. I know it’s not dead and it can come back. But I left the drain plugged for a while.
The one in the laundry was my fault. I have too much shit I don’t want to put into landfill, but Malaysia has an ambivalent recycling system, and I have more cleaning cloths and rescued timber than I can use in our time here… so I may have made a pretty inviting place for it…
The one in the bathroom tonight…. yeah. Nah. Shit just got real. Hanging out doing my thing, I feel this thing climb up my leg, I let out a stifled squeal cause I don’t really know what it was. But then as a see something large and black scurry under the door I know what it is… ‘fuck’ I think…. ‘maybe it was a moth and I damaged its wings?’ Yeah…. keep telling itself that… so I keep eyes on the spot where it went. I finish my biz, and then I see it scurry toward my trousers on the floor which are still around my ankles! Another stifled scream (Hubs passed out hours ago) my legs are in the air and I shimmy my pants off onto the floor. ‘What if it’s hiding in the layers of fabric? I don’t know where it is!’ I then bring my feet up, and I’m squatting on the toilet EXACTLY like all those airport toilet signs show you NOT to do!!!! I laugh at myself squatting on the dunny in the dark, hiding from a bug… it reminded me of a time long ago ‘hiding’ on a table from a mouse… I still don’t know where that little fucker is. I flush, thinking that might scare it out, and that I’m safe from it while I’m on the toilet. (I know they can climb it, but it’s all I have right now.) No roach. I stand up, still on the toilet, wash my hands, I’m good to go accept I can’t get from the toilet and through the door in a single leap. I check, I jump, step and slam the door. I’m free!
The door luckily has no gap at the bottom, the bathroom floor is 1/2 inch lower than the bedroom floor, and the door is lower to be on the bathroom side and makes it so that guy couldn’t come back in… unless of course in the whole shimming off pants squatting on the toilet time, it made it out of the bathroom… although of course there are drains, and windows and walls. There are always ways for the likes of bugs….
And so tomorrow, it’s going to have to get some roach traps I think…
I do also have another household pest which I’m sure exists, but I’m still in denial about…. so I’m going to leave it be. Until it has the audacity to crawl up my leg in the dark while I’m on the dunny!!!
Just Making It Up... As We Go Along 