ROACH HORROR

Not being an hysterical type I have often caught live poisonous snakes to prevent their being killed, and am regularly called upon to pick up hopping frogs or hissing chameleons etc.  I do this with panache and style. I have never been guilty of jumping on the table and screaming at the sight of a mouse.

The one exception to the rule is the dreaded cockroach.  It's the way they scuttle and scurry. For some reason they strike me speechless with terror.

Having had an extensive private library in his youth, my man has a lot of well loved books that  he has  lugged from pillar to post for years. When we  bought our pondokkie the first thing he did was to build three walls of floor to ceiling bookcases. Out came the by now yellowed and worm-eaten books and they were lovingly placed on the shelves, classified according to size rather than subject. And there they stayed undisturbed for six years while we read library books.

This week, all unsuspecting, I innocently took down a book. Horror upon horrors: there was a huge cockroach wriggling under my hand. Keeping my mouth shut I screamed through my nose and stomped on the monster. Yuck!  After covering various cages and aquariums and catching six cats and throwing them outside I gleefully sprayed roach poison all along a row of books, muttering murderous incantations.

Stephen King is tame compared to what happened next. Dozens of roaches started to pour out from between Churchill and Shakespeare. They scuttled up Jane Austin and glared at me from behind Keats and Shelley. As they reached the top they started to fall (leap?) off as more and more of their revolting cousins kept appearing. Soon they were also scuttling all around the floor, and over my feet.

The hackneyed phrase “shivers up my back” is incorrect. Your whole skin crawls and shimmers up and down. I kept squealing with my mouth shut and jumping all over as they ran towards me. Thankfully, they started to flop over on their backs just before they managed to carry me off.

I badly needed to get to the kitchen to fetch the dust pan but was afraid to run the gauntlet to the door. Eventually I swept up many pans of corpses and tried to flush them down the loo. Big mistake! They float! No matter how many times you flush they stay. What's more they revived and started to crawl up the inside of the loo. I flushed frantically, humming shrilly.

Worse still, not having the bucks to call in Robbie, our local intrepid dragon slayer, I have another three walls of books to de-roach. I am so aware of what lurks behind the pages of history, drama and art.  Beatrix Potter would roll in her grave if she knew what un-cute little creatures were between the pages of her charming stories. Nightmare on Elm Street revisited!

Procrastination reigns: the flesh is willing but the spirit is terrified!

Now I jump and the shivers start at the slightest rustling sound. Hysteria lurks just under the surface.  I can't sleep and feel on the verge of a panic attack. Of course Ron keeps tickling me and saying, “Scuttle, scuttle!!”.

I am seriously contemplating taking to drink while I plan Ron's painful demise.