Attack of the Tikatika

I was having the best kind of sleep there is: the night’s rest between illness and health. The sleep where you wake up so alive that you forget last night’s professed battle with death. On this night just before sunrise, a gentle tapping on my bare shoulder awoke me prematurely. Instinctively, I brushed it away… no, it’s not a hand; no, it’s not another greedy mosquito… instantly I sprang up with surprising vitality, given the early hour and my lingering illness. From my bedside I glared down at the mass of spindly legs and a thick nutty shell, a miniature runway model with a mammoth, seemingly impractical jacket that overwhelms both her bony legs and beady eyes. In the first few minutes of being awake, my mind and body dismiss any attempt at context, causing the smallest menace to become a Goliath. Then I started hyperventilating. Soon the tikatika registered his vulnerability in the light and began the classic bumper-car movements across my bed. I grabbed a broom, but this was a half-hearted gesture. My mind jumped to the belly-up tikatika in the kitchen last week, oozing from the impact, ants marching to and from their day’s feast. The memory of poor Gregor in Kafka’s Metamorphosis has also had a permanent effect on me, and causes my chest to tighten a little. Exploiting my hesitance, the tikatika scuttled under my bed, a smart move. Too much dust and other pests for me to bother; I’ll deal with it in the morning.

I read for a while, finishing a novel on Bangladesh’s War of Independence. A little more sleep would be nice… if I leave the light on he won’t bother me, like when I saw him scouting out my room last night before he ran out the door. Back into the deep sleep.

My alarm clock rings and again, instinctively, I brush my limbs to check for any pests who dare breach the privacy of my skin. None. I lift the pillows, aware that the tikatika must be somewhere. Suddenly he flies (how could I forget, they fly?!) from the ceiling and plops down where my head had lain moments before. Clearly this was a pre-calculated move. The knowledge that he was up there while I slept, watching me like some arthropoid pervert, further incensed me. The war is on. This time I maintained eye contact as he sat contently, twitching his antennae like a comedian with overactive eyebrows. He’s teasing me. With clarity and deliberateness I grabbed a glass from my nightstand, luckily leftover from washing down last night’s cold medicine. The first attempt ends badly; I stop midway through the swinging arch of my arm because the last bit of water has unexpectedly jumped out, now taking my full attention as I follow its tragic trajectory. It lands in an unfortunately conspicuous location on my bed, but far from the tikatika. The tikatika remains unfazed. Why should he be afraid? His kind will be around long after we’re gone.

The second attempt is a success. I clamp the glass down around him while he futilely scrambles up and down, as he will for the last 4 minutes of his life. Now what? There’s an open window down the hall, but what’s to stop him from returning? Shall I find some sacrificial grounds, say a prayer, and squash him there? No, I stick to my tried-and-true insect exile, the toilet. No blood on my hands and assurance he won’t be back. I was heading there anyway. The tikatika is the second occupant of the toilet today, not even worthy of his own flush.

Being the hypersensitive and over analytical person I am, I reflect on my own transformation from the vegetarian, peace-loving, naturalist into a cold-blooded killer. I’ve waged attrition against ants, I take pride in my one-handed-mosquito-grab, and I’ve even mercilessly murdered mice (though, I tell myself, as painlessly as possible). I’ve seen enough Discovery Channel to know that not all animals are herbivores, and that killing is a natural and necessary part of the ecosystem. But as humans, what is “natural” and what is not? Do we have the right to judge?

Is there a connection between violence towards other species and violence within our own? In the past women and racial minorities were seen as subhuman, and this simple distinction was used to justify years of violence and oppression. I’ll surely be discussing this further in later posts, but consider for now the pervasiveness of violence in our culture—not just on the “streets” but on our plates. And remember what the Hutu extremists called the Tutsi in the Rwanda genocide. They called them cockroaches.