Insects

At one point in the movie The Princess Bride, Buttercup and Wesley have survived two of the three “terrors of the Fire Swamp”—the Flame Spurt and the Lightning Sand, when they are set upon by the vicious third terror--the R.O.U.S’s, or Rodents of Unusual Size. While the rodents here in Uganda generally tend to be of a Fairly Typical Size, we regularly find ourselves faced with the menacing I.O.U.S’s—Insects of Unusual Size.

These six-legged beasts invade our homes, attack our porch lights, lie in wait in dark corners and release powerful biological weapons such as malaria or sleeping sickness. They lay their eggs in our feet, attach themselves to our dogs’ ears and sting us (causing unsightly swelling.) They burrow into our deliciously ripe fruit, infest our rice and drown in our drinks. And how do we defend ourselves? A thin net suspended over our beds and a small bottle of Deep Woods Off. We don’t stand a chance against the sheer numbers of their forces!

Yes, insects are definitely a part of each and every day. Whenever we sweep the house, there are usually tiny ants in the dust pile that we sweep out the door. We go to sleep at night to the sound of the cicadas buzzing outside. Every morning we have to deal with all the lake fly carcasses on the floor beneath the window. Fruit flies are ubiquitous in the kitchen. Slapping mosquitoes is a regular evening activity. But all of these bugs are fairly small. Every once in a while, however, we come across an insect that is just ridiculously large.

There was a beetle in front of Paul and Megan’s house one day that was probably three inches long with a body that was about an inch and a half wide. Fortunately we don’t have them in our new houses, but where we used to live, we’d regularly see two inch cockroaches. And then I came across this one morning on my front porch:

We’ll never defeat them, so we are forced to learn how to co-exist with them. You learn that flip-flops make excellent fly swatters and that it is important to keep a can of Doom (the Ugandan version of Raid) handy at all times. No big deal. As Wesley says about the Fire Swamp, ”It’s not that bad...the trees are actually quite lovely.”