Sunday morning I got a concerned call from a new arrival. This is a rather large man -- looks like a bouncer. But no matter his size, after his malaria and security briefings (meetings that every new arrival must attend), this guy was more afraid of mosquitos than of militants! So, imagine his fear when, while in bed, a cockroach landed on his face! He wanted to be moved but I assured him that cockroaches could be found anywhere in the camp -- though I'd not heard of any landing on someone's face before! I arranged for the place to be sprayed and assured him that it probably wouldn't happen again.
That's when I remembered that just a couple of days ago, while Jim was in Lagos, I walked into the house in the evening and a small lizard scurried ahead of me across the dining room floor. It went under the couch and I followed him and sat on the couch -- without my legs up, even. It didn't even hit me until the cockroach incident -- I've grown quite accustomed to the little critters that live with us in our camp. I've found that lizards are our friends. They usually run as fast as possible when our footsteps approach, so they never bother us directly. And ... they eat the bugs that DO bother us -- the large, ugly, black, flying things that have landed in my tea cup, in my hair, and on my shoulder! Bring on the lizards! I don't want any cockroach landing on my face whilst I'm sleeping! But when they're just crawling around on the floor -- I hardly notice it anymore!
My how times have changed since I saw the first lizard and the first cockroach in our house and, in both situations, jumped up on the couch whilst shouting to Jim to please kill the thing!
1 comment:
I echo your love for lizards. They are harmless (at least the non-poisonous ones) and even entertaining.
On the other hands, I have been on "vacation" in the Bahamas and seen an entire wall move because of all the great big giant, and might I add, flying, cockroaches that live there. In that incident we had to decide between walking inches from the wall and getting hit from a highway of traffic (no sidewalks). I chose the cockroaches. They aren't evil, just doing their cockroach thing. Luckily at the time I didn't know they flew. I found that out later in the hotel.
Still, as God's creatures I've gotta love 'em (from afar).
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