My aversion to pests nearly cost me my sight several years ago. It all happened one Saturday evening at Alheri, a settlement located along Zaria Road, Jos. I had returned from my normal evening workout at the St. Murumba College, Jos, which was a shouting distance from my residence. After taking my shower, I set the table for my dinner because I was a loner in the house. And no sooner had I settled for the meal than an uninvited guest suddenly manifested at the other end of the table.
The strange guest was an unusually huge cockroach. It was not looking only massive but also shinning, shiner than I was… a proof that it had been living well under my roof without contributing a dime to the food budget. At first, I was taken aback by the audacity of the insect. For a long while, our eyes locked as its antennas were swinging sideways. I got the shock of my life when the guest lifted its belly from the table top and inched its way towards the dishes. At that point, I gently kicked my chair back and gradually rose to my feet.
On sensing my move, the guest slowly backpedalled. I reached for a canister of Mobil insecticide which was close by. While going for the canister, I kept monitoring the insect with the extreme corners of my eyes so that I would not lose track of it. As I inched my way back to the dining table, it swiftly made a U-turn and disappeared under the table. It is said that to catch a monkey, you have to behave like a monkey. So also, to kill a cockroach, you have to act like one. No wahala! I sank on my knees and began to crawl under the table for the cockroach hunt not with a machete or cudgel as was the case when I hunted for bushmeat. On sighting the insect, I squeezed the trigger of the canister. What followed was a loud SMS or save my soul. But the sound was let out not by the hunted but the hunter. Unknown to me, the eye of the canister was pointing at my face and not the target! The canister flew from my hand. The cockroach must have scampered to safety following the loud sound.
It was like my eyes were on fire. I groped my way to the toilet where I immersed my face in the wash hand basin filled with cold water for a long while. After getting a brief relief, I managed to drive myself with dim eyes (as though one was eyeing a lady) to see my doctor for proper medical attention. I could not but thank God for saving my eyes; I also learnt a big lesson from that experience.
Upon returning home, I went back to the table to have the dinner… all alone! A couple of days later, the guest and I came face to face again. But I had become wiser. Rather than call on Mobil for help, I reached for a broom. With the broom, I was able to kill the pest and many more thereafter. Since that time, I have believed in the power of the broom like the folks in the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) did… ask the followers of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)!
Then came penultimate Friday in Kubwa, a sprawling settlement in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, where I now reside. I had gone out to the office in Maitama in the City Centre, to sort out one or two things. Upon returning home later in the afternoon, my sitting room had been turned into a battleground. There was this unwanted guest that chose to live with us since December, last year. This time around, it was a giant house rat. The entire household had been uncomfortable with the presence of the rodent, considering the danger it could constitute as a possible purveyor of Lassa fever virus.
Having chosen the kitchen as its comfort zone, we did all things humanly possible to track it down or eliminate it. We employed all manner of rat poisons, including a rat trapping device but the smart animal evaded all of them. We also identified a hole in the kitchen cabinet. I emptied a bottle of concentrated Sniper inside it and sealed it off. Yet, the mystery rodent kept resurfacing in the kitchen. At a point, we thought we had more than one guest.
A couple of days before the epic battle in the parlour, the animal chose to extend its cohabitation to the sitting room. We panicked because of some parcels of books and the leather seats in the parlour. After all attempts to ease it out of the sitting room had failed, the rodent was seen trapped between the glass window and the mosquito net. At that point, my wife decided that a mercenary had to be enlisted into the battle. So, she sent one of my boys to go and fetch one of the security guys in the estate.
The battle was still raging when I arrived. By the time I joined the fighters, employing my hunting skills, the rat had been bathed with almost a full canister of giant Rambo insecticide. But it seemed the rodent was enjoying the bath as it was licking it, except that it suffered what looked like hiccups in the process. After the mercenary had pinned it down with a stick, I asked one of the boys to fetch him a kitchen knife with a pointed end and the mercenary used it to gore the chest. The rodent let out a loud sound, gasped for a while, and gave up the ghost. The “hired killer” dragged the cadaver out and set it ablaze.
As we fought the battle hammer and tongs, I remembered the seizure of Buhari’s office by a battalion of rodents while he was on a marathon medical vacation in London, last year. I would have sent an SOS to the Presidential Villa if the mercenary had failed to subdue the one-rat army.
A week after the conquest, we have been enjoying our peace but we are still contending with mosquitoes and dodgy wall geckos. Any ideas how those ones can be eliminated once and for all?
