As I reached for the knob, I spied Bruno out of the corner of my eye, coiled and ready to dart in. I steadied my foot against the door to block unlawful entry (my bedroom is a No-Cat-Fur Zone) and cracked it open. To my surprise, Bruno lunged in the opposite direction, sending a long, dark shadow into the crack behind the hinge.
Centipede? Gecko? Or perhaps a humongous cockroach?
I’ve never seen a centipede in my house and only occasionally a hapless gecko, also known as a mobile cat treat. But cockroaches, now they abound in every nook and cranny. I can’t remember how many times I’ve opened a drawer and sprung back in fright as a burly, brown bug waived its antennae at me before scampering into the recesses of the cabinet, ready to resurface in the next drawer to terrorize me again.
Reality shows thrive on parading their participants against a backdrop of crisp blue skies, aqua waters and pristine sandy beaches, all bathed in the glory of tropical sunshine. But those beautiful images leave out precisely what they are there to portray: reality. And in particular, one oft-overlooked joy of tropical paradise – its buggy underbelly.
Bugs are everywhere. A cornucopia of winged invaders swarm through the air, ready to attack. Worms wiggle out of your guavas. Tiny, black bugs nest on your ceilings. And then there are the myriad of interlopers hiding in the clandestine reaches of your home, waiting for a new sack of flour to breed in or a bag of pasta to infiltrate. Nothing, not even sealed, o-ringed containers seem to thwart them.
But some of the scariest are those five centimeters of pure Hitchcockian fright that resemble cockroaches on steroids. These terrorists dart across your floor at night, ready to turn your stomach and destroy your peace of mind. Fortunately, I have five kilos of orange and white fluff to protect me. Bruno has made it his nightly mission to rid my house of these large, uninvited guests, strewing their dismembered carcasses throughout the house for me to sweep up in the morning.
It’s Bugageddon here.
I stepped away from the door to let Bruno run in and finish the job. But of course, when formally invited to enter the Exclusion Zone, he does not. Instead, he remained transfixed on the sliver of space behind the door.
Groan. I hate bugs, and now I had to deal with this large invader somewhere in my bedroom. No matter what the outcome I knew I was not going to sleep well.
I reached in and flicked on the light, hesitating a moment before heading inside to see where my shadowy intruder had disappeared to. I tip-toed to the back edge of the door and froze. A black, pointy-tailed demon was waiving two pincers at me from the narrow crack. A scorpion.
These prolific arachnids relish the climate here and love to hide in dark, cozy places where they lay in wait, ready to sting you when threatened. Living mere meters from the water, I had heretofore been spared this iconic tropical threat. But no more. And they definitely are a threat. A friend confronted one of these dark minions of mischief hiding in her wetsuit. When she reached into the sleeve to turn it right-side out, the stowaway stung her hand multiple times. Her arm swelled up to her shoulder, and the burning pain lasted until the wee hours of the morning before ebbing.
I have been lucky. Other than the daily annoyance of sand fly and mosquito bites, which create welts in direct proportion to their size – small, medium and jurassic, the worst encounter I have had was with a doctor fly. I made the acquaintance of this pest while on my hands and knees washing the ubiquitous dust off my floor. A yellow and black triangle glided through the air, landing on the back of my hand before promptly biting it. My hand ballooned, forcing me to skip diving the next day since squeezing it into a wetsuit would have been an exercise in futility. Had not someone previously shared her doctor fly bite on social media, I would have bee-lined it to the local clinic. I will not be lulled into complacency again. Be aware Ms. Fly, I’m watching out for you.
A shiver ran up my spine as I pictured the potential danger facing me. I slammed the door shut, hoping to crush this curly-tailed, clawed incubus. Taking a deep breath, I opened the door, my eyes fixed on the far edge, waiting for the dark blur of a lifeless corpse to drop to the floor. However, to my dismay, there wasn’t a flicker of movement. I crept in for a closer look and recoiled as the fiend skittered up to the next door hinge. There had been just enough of a gap to leave my trespasser unharmed.
This devil had to go.
I scanned my room for something expendable to slip in between the door and the frame to reduce the gap. DVDs, strobes, hair bobbles, charging cords, a flashlight – nothing suitable. Ugh. Then I spied a quick-start guide sticking out from under a wooden box. I grabbed it, folded it in half twice and cautiously slipped it behind at the back edge of the door where scorpio was waiting for me. I shoved the door shut, irked that all I could find was a terse, get-up-and-go pamphlet. Why couldn’t it have been a nice, thick exposé on all the fine features of my new camera? Alas, those are now only found on the internet.
One. Two. Three. Time to face the music, or bug, as the case may be. I crossed my fingers and opened the door a hair. The stunned beast dropped to the floor, waiving his pincers with his tail raised high ready to strike, before disappearing under one of my large, suitcase-sized Pelican cases, which was packed to the hilt with dive gear.
One rotted neck seal and two pairs of rotted ankle and wrist seals taught me the hard (and expensive) lesson that gear needs to be kept in a moisture-proof environment, hence the two Pelican cases in my bedroom. That’s another facet of reality you don’t see on reality TV: corrosion. In the tropics the air is so humid and salty that everything rusts, corrodes and disintegrates, including stainless steel, neoprene, plastic and silicon. So if you want something to last, you’ve got to seal it up.
Fortunately, the case would be easy to move since it had two wheels for ease of dragging. But first I needed to ascertain precisely where the miscreant was hiding. I dropped onto my knees and lowered my head to peer under the case, keeping a respectful distance – just in case. I barely made out a dark shadow clinging to the edge of the wall under the back of the case.
My eyes darted around the room looking for something, anything to quash this critter before he disappeared and threatened to forever ruin my sleep. Seeing nothing, I took off my house slipper – a solid and eminently practical Croc sandal – and inched back the case. He was still there but barely moving. I must have injured him in the door jam. Poor guy, I had nothing against him, but not in my house.
I took a deep breath and crashed the sole of my shoe onto his hard carapace. In a frenzy, I whacked him into a mushy pulp and put him out of our mutual misery. I stood there a moment, scanning for signs of life. Seeing none, I ran into the kitchen for my dust pan. As I leaned over to pick it up, I felt a slight prick on my leg. I reflexively slapped at it. But all I got was leg for when looked down, I saw a tiny pair of wings zig-zagging out of reach. Lovely. Did I mention, I hate bugs.
Returning to my room, I was surprised to see Bruno still parked at the corner of my door, unaware that his prey had already met his maker. I looked down at the ginger-flecked fuzzball with pride. My hero. Had he not alerted me, I would have slipped under my covers unaware of the peril awaiting me in the dark ready to scurry across my pillow or even worse, across me. No. No. No. These thoughts had to stop. Picturing what might have been would only lead to what definitely would be – nightmares of Bugageddon.
I braced my foot against the jamb to ensure my savior did not enter the Forbidden Realm and slipped back into my room, clicking the door shut. Worried for a moment that the mangled corpse may have somehow been resurrected and scurried to a distant, dark place to torment me, I slipped a glance at the corner. I breathed a sigh of relief; it was still there.
As I swept up the crushed carcass, I noticed a prickly itch on my leg. Without thinking, I scratched it. Damn it. I cursed my faux pas and every member of the arthropod phylum. Scratching an itch only makes it ten times worse. Now this tiny bite was going to be just as annoying as a jurassic one.
For a brief moment, I toyed with the idea of getting ready for bed. But my racing heart betrayed the adrenalin coursing through my veins. No, there was no way I would be able to sleep, not with visions of pincered demons dancing in my head. I needed a diversion, something to take me far, far away from the real world of island life. Perhaps a relaxing reality show. Yes, watching people explore the pristine, bug-free, itch-free tropics as envisioned by the doyens of reality TV would be the perfect antidote to the real world because as I’ve discovered, reality bites. Literally.
© 2020 Sandra Y. K. Loder
Originally published March 26, 2020
