Attack of the killer cockroach

When you have house guests you like to at least try and put up a façade of cleanliness.  Just before they arrive you put extra effort into making the house look presentable.  Some of those cleaning jobs that you have put off because you are either too lazy or bored to tackle, suddenly need to be done as a matter of urgency.  You maybe a lazy disorganised slob, but you don't want your house guests thinking that. So either successfully or unsuccessfully you give the whole place a spit and a polish and hide away the worst of the clutter behind bulging cupboard doors.  As long as they don't look too closely or open the wrong doors you should be able to fool them for a little while at least.

Not so when the cockroach that  you had disturbed and frightened under the fridge earlier in the day while you were cleaning the floor makes his grand appearance especially for you house guest.

Steve has his brother Al up visiting us for a few days.  We picked him up from the airport and deposited him in our dining room for a catch up chat and a cup of tea.  Now Al is from Queensland, so no cockroach is going to faze this guy. But his most recent jaunt has seen him stop in and visit us after having spent a week in Canberra.

Now I can only guess, as cockroaches don't normally charge out from under my fridge and assault my house guests.  In fact I can't actually remember it ever having happened before.  Sure late at night the odd cocky would make a quick dart across the floor from one protective piece of furniture to another, but in broad day light and running straight at someone? No never.

Well this cockroach was a fool.  If it thought it could wreak its revenge on me from being forced to cower under the fridge in terror earlier in the day by attacking one of my house guests, it had another thing coming.  I can just imagine it eyeing Al off from amongst the dust and grime under the dark fridge.  It would have put on its hyper sensor alerts and determined that here was a fella from Canberra.  An area that rarely sees cockroaches.  It would have plotted its dastardly plan to dash out and scare the crap outta the house guest, hopefully making him leap onto a chair in sheer terror.  Then the cockroach could have strutted around like Arnold Swartzneigger before resuming its sentry under another piece of furniture.

Now this evil plan would have worked if it had chosen a true Canberran like, perhaps, my sister.  He would have got himself a good deal of squealing and arm flapping to accompany the assent of terror up upon the chair. But Al, is a Queenslander, he eats cockroaches for breakfast.  And big ones too.  Not these pathetic little mamby pamby ones we have in NSW, but big muscley Queensland ones. So when the smart arse cockroach made his brave dash for Al he met his demise in a spectacularly rapid fashion. 

If cockroach stomping was an Olympic sport, Al would be a world champion.  This cockroach never stood a chance. The moment Al noticed the tell tale movement in the corner of his eye, he moved with lightning speed and stomped down with his bare foot fair on the cockroach's back. Splat. Cockroach got flattened and guts went spurt.  It was so second nature to Al I don't think that he even realised he'd done it at first.

As I tittered with slight embarrassment, muttering something along the lines of 'Oh I don't know how he got there, we don't normally have cockroaches' I bent down to wipe him from the floor with a tissue.  In true cockroach form, this is why they will one day rule the world, he got up (with no guts) and tried to run away.  You have to give him credit for his tenacity, but this creature was never going to survive, not when we had the world champion cockroach stomper in the house.

That was one cockroach who should have chosen his quarry more carefully.