The things that 'Bug' Me
While reading a friend’s blog recently about spiders and such, I was reminded of my own encounters with said beasties whilst in Okinawa. Okinawa is a tropical island about 900 miles south of Mainland Japan, and is home to many creepy crawlers, but these short notes are about a particular insect most of us are familiar with; the disgusting cockroach. Now I’ve heard stories of large cockroaches in the Gulf States area, but being from California, the ones I could identify never grew larger than say an inch or two. In Okinawa however, they were as big as pets.
Story number one:
I lived off base in a 2 bed one bath house with 4 other guys; one was a missionary working as a school teacher, and the other 3 were ‘Zoomies’, who were also stationed on Kadena AFB. We were all friends who met at a Christian Coffee house called ‘The Net’, which was located a few blocks down from Gate 2 on Gate 2 Street.
There were 2 racks in one bedroom, and a set of bunk beds and a third rack in the other. Two or three of the Zoomies worked nights, so the house was rarely completely occupied, but it gave us a place to hang out that resembled real life (barracks stories later).
I had the top bunk in the room with 3 racks and was asleep one warm night when I was awakened by one of these said beasties running across my chest. Without thought, I grabbed it with my left hand and chucked it across the room. Then it struck me. My buddy Paul was asleep on the single rack that was located in the direct path of my throw… I lay there quietly, wondering if Paul was going to realize he was sharing his rack with a friendly when all of a sudden, Paul came straight up outa bed and screamed like a girl. I continued to feign sleep, all the while burying my face in the pillow laughing and crying.
Story number two:
Arriving home one night, I walked into the house. I never walked into a dark room without first turning on the lights (thanks in part to the first Halloween movie), so standing at the door, I reached around and found the light switch. As soon as the light came on, a small brigade of four and five inch cockroaches went scurrying back into hiding. Yuck! I noticed one was still visible on the wall across the room, so, in a flash I thought I'd kill at least one of them. Slowly approaching the victim of my wrath, I took off a shoe and was ready to strike when the dang thing took off and flew across the room. UGH! They fly! So that was how that cockroach from the first story got onto my top bunk!
Story number 3:
Walking down from our little parking area toward the house, I noticed a very large (for Okinawa) CR working its way thru the grass toward the house. Remembering the night from the previous story, I thought to my self “I’ll do what I can to stop this invasion!” so raising a powerful right foot I slammed down on the creepy and stomped about five or six times until I was confident it had been thoroughly pulverized, and removed my foot to see the carnage. Hmmm. No carnage. As I was looking very closely at the area where I had just defeated the foe that was as big as my cat, I felt that sorry rascal cross over my knee and was heading up my thigh inside my pants! EEGAD! I grabbed it thru my pants and squeezed as hard as I could smearing the guts on the inside of my pants. Dang it! I had to change my pants, but not just for the bug.
Story number one:
I lived off base in a 2 bed one bath house with 4 other guys; one was a missionary working as a school teacher, and the other 3 were ‘Zoomies’, who were also stationed on Kadena AFB. We were all friends who met at a Christian Coffee house called ‘The Net’, which was located a few blocks down from Gate 2 on Gate 2 Street.
There were 2 racks in one bedroom, and a set of bunk beds and a third rack in the other. Two or three of the Zoomies worked nights, so the house was rarely completely occupied, but it gave us a place to hang out that resembled real life (barracks stories later).
I had the top bunk in the room with 3 racks and was asleep one warm night when I was awakened by one of these said beasties running across my chest. Without thought, I grabbed it with my left hand and chucked it across the room. Then it struck me. My buddy Paul was asleep on the single rack that was located in the direct path of my throw… I lay there quietly, wondering if Paul was going to realize he was sharing his rack with a friendly when all of a sudden, Paul came straight up outa bed and screamed like a girl. I continued to feign sleep, all the while burying my face in the pillow laughing and crying.
Story number two:
Arriving home one night, I walked into the house. I never walked into a dark room without first turning on the lights (thanks in part to the first Halloween movie), so standing at the door, I reached around and found the light switch. As soon as the light came on, a small brigade of four and five inch cockroaches went scurrying back into hiding. Yuck! I noticed one was still visible on the wall across the room, so, in a flash I thought I'd kill at least one of them. Slowly approaching the victim of my wrath, I took off a shoe and was ready to strike when the dang thing took off and flew across the room. UGH! They fly! So that was how that cockroach from the first story got onto my top bunk!
Story number 3:
Walking down from our little parking area toward the house, I noticed a very large (for Okinawa) CR working its way thru the grass toward the house. Remembering the night from the previous story, I thought to my self “I’ll do what I can to stop this invasion!” so raising a powerful right foot I slammed down on the creepy and stomped about five or six times until I was confident it had been thoroughly pulverized, and removed my foot to see the carnage. Hmmm. No carnage. As I was looking very closely at the area where I had just defeated the foe that was as big as my cat, I felt that sorry rascal cross over my knee and was heading up my thigh inside my pants! EEGAD! I grabbed it thru my pants and squeezed as hard as I could smearing the guts on the inside of my pants. Dang it! I had to change my pants, but not just for the bug.
posted by Gary | 9:49 AM
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