25 February 2016
Bugs
Their role in character assessment.
By Chin Chin
“Still through the cloven skies they come
With peaceful wings unfurled”
The poet’s vision of arriving angels has inspired many a singer. It is a very different story however when the arrivals are not angels at all but mosquitoes, moths and other assorted insects, all looking for some exposed flesh to bite or to flutter against. No celestial singing then, I am afraid, but the steady swish of the fly swat, punctuated with slapping noises and swearing when the intruders get one back. Finally the staccato bursts from the can of insecticide as the decision is made to put a good night’s sleep before long-term health risks.
You can tell a lot about someone from how they react to an insect in the room in the early hours of the morning. At one level it is a test of competence. There are people who simply turn on the light, throw a book or a ball of socks and the insect is no more – the only trace of its brief life being an attractive addition to the pattern on the wallpaper. However such skills are unusual outside the military and professional sport and most of us would simply find that the missile had broken a favourite ornament or something of that sort. That doesn’t mean that we cannot take action to eliminate the menace, merely that the action will have to be competent and well thought through rather than dramatic and based on reflexes. More Montgomery, less Rommel, to borrow from the history of the North African campaign.
Here planning counts for everything and it is important to learn from experience. Many years ago I had a great aunt and there was a nest of cockroaches under the sink in her kitchen. I don’t mean that she kept cockroaches as pets; they had established the nest themselves as a base from which they could run forays around her flat. Now there is a lot to be said for cockroaches. They are one of nature’s cleaners and do their valuable work silently and without reward – no demands from them for a living wage. Also I have always understood that they are perfectly good to eat – a sort of land-based prawn although rather smaller and less fleshy – perhaps a cheap alternative for the makers of prawn cocktail. One needs to be a little careful here, however, because Ed Archbold, the 2012 winner of the Midnight Madness bug-eating competition at Ben Siegel Reptile Store in Deerfield Beach near Miami, died choking immediately after his victory. That may be simply because he ate too many cockroaches or it may just be the fact that he ate them live. Had they been sauteed in a little garlic the outcome might have been different – and I imagine that they would have had more flavour too.
Anyway despite these obvious benefits, my great aunt took against the cockroaches and a friend and I were given a can of Coopers anti-cockroach spray, the idea being that we squirt the spray into the cupboard under the sink to convert it into a lethal chamber – at least for cockroaches. Simple, you might think. Any fool could do it; but it is at this point that we should have read the reminiscences of the great cockroach killers of the past because we overlooked an important piece of preparation.
If you are ever about to squirt insecticide into a cockroach nest, remember this. Before doing so you should squirt a large circle on the ceiling in the centre of the room. This tactic borrows from the use of castles by the Crusaders, a castle being somewhere where you simply cannot be got at by the opposition. If you do not create your circle, dying cockroaches will rush out of the nest and clamber up the walls in their bid to escape. They will then cover the ceiling and drop as they die, producing a gentle rain from heaven of rather a novel sort. They don’t stop at that either. They get into your hair and continue their death throes as they become knotted into it.
There is nothing particularly wrong with having cockroaches dying in your hair. As I have explained they are clean creatures but it certainly would not do to take one that was full of insecticide and absentmindedly eat it, so for safety would recommend the creation of a haven and standing firmly beneath it. Then any cockroach that would otherwise drop on you falls to the floor as soon as it touches the barrier.
So much for skill and tactics, but an invasion of insects can be used to test character as well as competence. We all know that you can test whether your prospective daughter-in-law is a true princess by putting a pea under the mattress. If you are a young lady and want to test the mettle of your lover, insects are a very good way of doing it.
All you need to do is to wait for a hot evening and then, once you’re in bed, open a match box in which you have concealed some mosquitoes. After a bit they will begin to “whine” and it is at this point that you pretend to be asleep and covertly observe your companion’s reaction. Of course you will have liberally covered yourself with repellent in advance so that you are fully relaxed and able to weigh the results of your experiment dispassionately. There are a number of possibilities.
One is that your companion continues to lie with flesh exposed. That means one of two things. Either he is born in an heroic mould and is lying there determined to protect you by satisfying the predator with his own blood. The other is that he has gone to sleep or is deaf. You should be able to eliminate the first of these with a quick kick in the ribs and “my word have you heard that, it sounds like one of those malarial ones”. The true hero will continue to lie with his flesh exposed. You can test for the second by whispering “by the way I’ve agreed for us to have lunch with my mother on [choose the day on which he has tickets for the cup final/ has booked to go fishing/or has been invited to a particularly expensive restaurant with his boss]”. That should test his hearing satisfactorily.
The second possibility is that he turns on the lights to attack the interlopers but, failing to close the window before he does so, he inadvertently invites many of their friends to join the party. It has been truly said that man is best judged in adversity so his behaviour when he realises what he has just done should give some useful clues.
The third possibility is that he surreptitiously pulls the sheet over his head hoping that the mosquitoes will bite you first and then be satisfied. At first sight that is a dastardly reaction but, before putting a line through his name in your little notebook of suitors, it is worth reflecting on the message in airline safety videos telling you to pull down your own oxygen mask before helping anyone else. Perhaps he is just saving himself so that if you are struck down with malaria he will be fit enough to nurse you through it.
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