A Big Bad Thing pays a visit

So there I was this morning, happily soaking up the glow of the Autumn Sun streaming through my office window, thinking what a lucky Shiny I am, having such a beautiful big sky view over the flatland to the mountains on the other side, all glittering and lovely, when I heard a vague scratching sound. A bit like paper rustling.

Through my golden-sunray-induced-reverie I heard it. A shuffling of papers in the vicinity of my colleague’s desk. Not something that would ordinarily bring me out of any kind of reverie, let alone a golden-sunray-induced one! Except that said colleague is on leave. I blinked, twice, and thought about turning around, the sun trying to keep me under its spell. The noise got louder. I got nervous.

I adopted the “If I don’t look around the Big Bad Thing will go away” stance, and continued to soak up the sun and started fiddling with my computer in the hope that the noise I made would drown out the scratching. I tried singing, loudly, but even a rousing rendition of Santa Claus is Coming to Town (why should such a great tune be reserved purely for one month a year?) couldn’t make it disappear.

It got louder, and closer (our desks join) and I decided I should muster up some courage to turn and face the Big Bad Thing. Slowly I turned my neck, just a little at first, not wanting to startle it, whatever it was.

Horrors! I was suddenly face-to-face with The Most Enormous Cockroach Known to Man (TMECKtM). Seriously, his 2000-lensed cockroach eyes were at my level. He was, admittedly, standing on the desk, as opposed to on the floor, but still, this guy was enormous. Rat-sized really (then again, the rats in this very old, many-roomed, used-to-be-hospital are cat-sized). TMECKtM looked at me, and I looked at it. Only momentarily, though. Then the reality kicked in. I was staring into the 2000 eyes of TMECKtM… fuuuuccckkkk.

I emitted a girly scream worthy of a Hollywood teen thriller and backed away before it could reach out and get its humungous spiky little cockroach hand stuck in my very-nice-thank-you jersey. I have to admit that I then very unfeministly called the nearest boy to come and ‘deal with it’.

Which he did, using a huge book.

I feel slightly bad about it. Perhaps TMECKtM was just coming over to say hello and share a cup of tea, like Miranda’s hippo?