Saturday, December 1, 2007

With joy I beheld a.......... cockroach!

I can't believe that I've actually written this. Me, the eejit who used to scream if a flying cockroach was anywhere in the same room as I was. (I wasn't even very comfortable eating litchis as a child, because the seeds reminded me of cockroaches).
I'd been rather paranoid about the mouse that was lurking in my bedroom a couple of weeks ago.
I'd only noticed it because of an almost subliminal movement on the floor. It was a tiny, rather cute looking 'mouselet'. What was bothersome was its potential peskiness. I could see it chewing up the computer's zillion wires, the clothes that the Sometimes Resident Engineer so casually flings upon the floor, hopping into our wardrobes ( which Someone who lives in this house usually leaves open) and chewing up all kinds of belongings. And then finding a soul mate and going forth and multiplying. And then me having to buy nasty poisons, and trying to locate the stinky corpses from behind heavy pieces of furniture. So much trauma and turmoil induced by one night's sighting!
A week or so after that my parents, sister and I were watching a movie in our sitting room. Again, a fleeting movement on the floor. I get up to look, and joy of joys- it is not the mouse! Just another damn cockroach.....sprayable, disposable, easier to deal with vermin. NOT THE MOUSE!

I haven't spotted it in the last fortnight. I sincerely hope that it found its way out of my house.
Do you remember the movie "Fiddler on the Roof"? In the spirit of the rabbi of Anatevka blessing the Tsar, I offer a blessing to the tiny mouse: "Lord, bless and keep the mouse.......away from us."

4 comments:

Lekhni said...

I don't know about Litchi seeds, but sometimes I recoil from seedless dates because they look like cockroaches :(

dipali said...

Lekhni! You are adding to my quirks.
No, now I am all grown up and happily eat litchis.But, traumatically, once I was having 'koftas' from the hostel mess when I was teaching, and a Big C had been fried into the kofta I dug my spoon into. Gross multiplied several times over!

Jabberwock said...

Have had similar situations at home (fleeting movements that could be mice, cockroaches or even lizards, but there's no way I could ever feel joyous or relieved after seeing a roach - even if the alternative was an army of rats!

dipali said...

Jabberwock, welcome! Methinks I will now have to blog about my favourite cockroach!
(Actually the only one that I like, and that too a fictitious one).