Attack of the winged behemoths
26th February, 2008
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There was this mohair jacket that once hung in my wardrobe and which I wore with pride, for it was an expensive item. I reached for it one wintry morn and was about to slide my arms into its welcoming, silk-lined sleeves when I noticed that someone, or something, had taken several bites out of it.
Hmmm, I thought, regarding the ten-cent piece-sized holes peppering its smooth panels. Rolling the wardrobe open wider, I reached inside and, piece by piece, extracted the rest of my clothes, some of which looked as if they had been blasted at close range with a shotgun. "Hmmm," I intoned, looking at my reflection in the mirror through a hole in the seat of a pair of pants. Moths! Nowhere in the manual Men Living in the 21st-Century did it mention that the moment you left your home for work, moths apparently the size of bats - maybe they were bats - would emerge from the shadows and start chewing on your clothes. As well as the jacket I lost a suit, and not one of the shabby ones. It occurred to me that there was little consolation to be drawn from the knowledge that I was being besieged by moths with good taste. Mothballs, I recalled, were my mother's antidote so I bought a significant quantity and hung them in my wardrobe. Within days, I noticed that people in the office were regarding me with even more circumspection than usual and that my passage between desks left a chorus of titters behind me. My wife eventually told me that I now smelled "like someone's great aunt". Apparently I had rather overdone the mothball treatment and it wasn't necessary to have a dozen dangling in any given cupboard. I couldn't smell it but I had turned myself into a human mothball, surrounded by an invisible cloud of mothball odour wherever I walked. While this had the desired effect of keeping the moths at bay, it was also quite efficient at repelling humans. I removed some of the mothballs and judged the problem solved. The arrival last week of the pest spray man was triggered not by moths but my wife's concern that the single cockroach she had found in the refrigerator presaged an outbreak of plague. The pest man immediately opened fire on the spiders that had been attempting with some success to weave a web around the entire house. "Gotcha!" he cried as a huge, hairy arachnid fled for cover. It was a slaughter, and I yelled encouragement as he strode around sending spiders to spider heaven. Wonderful, I thought. This is like the old days when we used to belt cane toads over the head with the back of a shovel or, if in a sporting mood, see how far we could hit them with a golf club. Sorry, but spiders rank just below snakes (and cane toads) on my long list of phobias and the only good one is a dead one. So, with the spiders despatched, I wandered off to make a cup of coffee and was mid-sip when I heard a cry from the bedroom. "Aha!" the pest man yelled and I rushed to the door. "Get the vacuum cleaner!" he cried. I handed him the vacuum and watched in horror as a patch of carpet vaporised up the nozzle.
"What was that?" I asked, staring at the floor.
Traps? To catch moths? Visions of winged behemoths large enough to carry off children and small dogs filled my mind. "Wool, mate. They love wool. There's one," he said, swiping at the air and opening his palm to proudly display what looked like a smear of dust. Parts of the carpet now look like they have been attacked by a deranged dog, the only good news being that the moths were so busy gorging on the floor covering that they neglected to chew more holes in our clothes. What next? Locusts? African killer bees? It's a jungle in here. |
