Beasties in the house

One of the great joys of living in sub-tropical Queensland (and I’m sure these things get only more delightful the further north one goes), is the ability to cohabit with all kinds of exotic critters. Huge fruitbats that swoop out of the tree next to you as you walk past, winging their way down the street ahead of you. They also eat fruit and then vomit up the seeds onto the ground below, or, as often happens, the car below. It turns out that fruit bat vomit is quite corrosive, so if you don’t want your paint job ruined, you have to wash it off quickly. Ah, for those halcyon days, living in the U.S., unaware of the dangers of fruit bat vomit that awaited me down under. We also have skinks, little brown lizards that scurry away as you walk past, and if they’re big enough, make you jump, in case it might be a snake. (Once, it was a python on the sidewalk and not a skink.) We have geckos, little lizards that crawl along the ceiling and make a loud chucking-chirping sound to announce their territory. They go away in the winter, but you know spring has arrived in the tropics when the geckos start calling. It’s not as lovely as lilacs blooming, but when there are barely seasons at all, you take what you can get for seasonal signs. Golden orb spiders are also not uncommon in my neighbourhood. They spin webs about two feet across, possibly meant to catch small children, and themselves are a few inches across. Nothing compared to the mighty Huntsman spider, which can grow as large as a man’s hand. Not my delicate, small, female hand. A man’s hand. And of course, no subtropical place would be complete without flying cockroaches. Giant, brown flying cockroaches, that can get up to two or more inches long.

I didn’t get off to a good start with Queensland’s cockroaches. I had seen them crawling around on the sidewalk at a safe distance, so I knew how large and disgusting they were. My first personal encounter with one was in the kitchen of some friends who had kindly invited me over to dinner. I felt something tickling my leg as I sat at the dinner table, and thought, oh, there must be a loose thread in my skirt, so I readjusted the skirt. A few seconds later, I felt more tickling and scratching, and I still thought it was some part of my clothing that was scratching me, so I reached down and shook out my skirt, and a HUGE cockroach landed on the floor and took flight. I jumped back and yelled, “It was in my skirt!” My hosts were typically Aussie, that is to say, unperturbed. “Welcome to Queensland,” was their attitude. Mine was a little different. “Omigod, I’ve moved to a place where two-inch long cockroaches can crawl up my skirt.” The horror, the horror.

The appearance of large cockroaches and spiders happens frequently in old houses, which is why I’m glad I live in a modern apartment with windows and screens that seal out the bugs completely. But, in the spring and summer, I cook outside on the barbie (yes, it really is called a “barbie” here) on my balcony, because it’s too bloody hot to cook indoors. And sometimes I leave the screen door open when I run back into the kitchen to get something. So that’s how I found a cockroach in the kitchen last week, lurking under my dish drainer, wiggling his brown antennae. (I don’t know that it wasn’t a her, but cockroaches have always seemed distinctively male to me.)

After screaming and leaping in the air, I had to decide what to do with it. Death sentence, or exile? I would like to say it was my deep compassion, instilled in me by Buddhist practice, that led me to spare his life, but in truth, it was just that he was about an inch long, and I couldn’t bear the thought of how much he would go crunch and squish under whatever object I chose to execute him with. And it’s not that hard to save a bug’s life. So I picked up a Tupperware box, and coaxed the little bugger out into the open, and then of course, he took flight. Causing more screaming and jumping. I cursed the fates that brought me to live in a place where a giant cockroach could fly around in my home. He landed on the kitchen wall, and crawled down to the counter, thankgod, where I was able to trap him under the box, and slide a piece of cardboard under it. He flew around in loops under the box, banging into the sides, as I escorted him outside. Ewwwww.

Like an idiot, when I went to my yoga class today, I left the door to the balcony standing wide open. Burglars and axe murderers are not too common in my neighbourhood, so luckily nothing was stolen, and there don’t seem to be any people with evil intent lurking in my back room or closets. But how do I know there wasn’t an intruder of the six-legged kind? Please, oh great spirit of cockroaches, remember that I was merciful to one of your children last week, and may none of your children enter my home or crawl under my clothing again!

Of course, I will also have to appease the great spirit of Huntsman spiders. I don’t really mind spiders at all, and I’ve always been happy to cohabit with small ones. I either let them be or take them outside (are you listening, great spirit of spiders?). But there are limits. I don’t want to wake up to find something crawling up my back that can have four legs on one side of my spine, and four legs on the other side, and whose weight I could actually feel. As I said, ewwww.

I know what my Aussie friends would say. “Don’t worry about the beasties, she’ll be right.”* What I want to say is, get me out of this continent!


* she’ll be right, she’ll be apples, no worries all mean everything will be fine, don’t worry about it