Cockroaches Alert

‘There’s a huge creepy-crawly on the wardrobe in here. Bring me something big. Quick!’ I panicked somewhat when my husband said this. In my mind’s eye, I pictured a cross between a tarantula and a usual cockroach.

I scrabbled to take a shoe, a book, and a weighty magazine into the danger zone (now I know why some people keep phone books …) without daring to raise my eyes. ‘Don’t look,’ said my husband, as if I needed any encouragement. Like a coward, I disappeared into the living room and considered what might happen next. Would he parade the squashed creepy-crawly through the apartment any minute now? Did we need to call an exterminator? As these thoughts passed through my mind, I could hear him trying to beat the tarantula into submission.

‘I think there’s more than one.’ How could this be happening? While I was wondering how several unidentified bugs could have ended up on the wardrobe in our bedroom, my husband sounded the all-clear in the next room. ‘Oh, now I know what it is,’ he said in a slightly reproachful tone of voice.

Turns out it wasn’t a tarantula after all. It was just two cockroaches – made of plastic. They were pinned to a beige hat as part of my costume for the staff evening event that formed part of the Drees & Sommer office seminar 2016, when my marketing colleagues and I dressed up as jungle camp contestants for a themed party. The two cockroaches came with me and made my outfit look that bit more authentic. Who would’ve thought that they would cause an even bigger stir so much later?