Ausborne Blog

I was tucking my beautiful daughter into her bed this evening when I felt something tickling the back of my neck.  I kind of freaked out when it happened, thinking that it may have been a spider or something.  It turned out, though, to be some piece of material from the little decorative bed drape for Betsy’s bed, and I had gotten all worked up about nothing.

It reminded me of some other event that still creeps me out, even after 15 years.  This would be the time that I let out the most horrifyingly girly scream of my existence.

I was serving as a missionary on the island of Barbados in the Autumn/Winter of 1993-1994, and my missionary companion and I were living in the upstairs portion of a house in the capital city of Bridgetown.

One evening we were talking with Beverly, the owner of the house who happened to live downstairs.  As we were talking on the rather dimly lit porch area outside her front door, I could see out of the corner of my eye that something was scurrying about in the darkness along the base of the wall.

Those sorts of things always made me uncomfortable, as if there was something watching me and waiting for just the right moment to attack.

Knowing that the cockroaches happened to be 2+ inches long and generally really disgusting made them just about the perfect thing for me to try to take out with a “best defense is a food offense” type of move.   I mean, I’m so much bigger than them and I can certainly step on them, right?

Well, at least that was the plan.

I made my move toward the creature in what I perceived to be a lightning quick pounce, only to find that it wasn’t quick enough.

It had disappeared.   Right into thin air.  Gone.

A quick scan of my surroundings didn’t reveal its location, either.   Only when my companion pointed to my shirt did I realize what had happened.   It seemed that I had forgotten an interesting detail:  Down there in Barbados the cockroaches can fly.  Oh sure, it’s only for short distances, but they can fly.

This thing had landed on the front of my shirt and was scurrying about, heading for the opening in the front of my shirt, between the buttons and behind my tie.

My reaction was extreme. I started screaming like a pathetic little girl and began dancing about, swatting at this _THING_ crawling around on me.

I finally knocked it off my shirt and was able to escape to the relative safety of my upstairs living quarters.

To this day I am still grossed out to no end by little creepy things that crawl around all over the place.

Yuck.