Files from the Roachagrin: The Leg Attack

So last night I was enjoying a pleasant after-work glass of wine and falafel pita at Uzo with Nick, Duane, Dom, Times, Chelsea, and Chelsea’s dad.

The night was beautiful, the Baba Ghanoush was FANTASTIC, and the cockroaches were…on my leg.

Yes, that’s right.  As we sat under the large, canvas umbrellas, the night began to cool, the curling  plates of incense kept the mosquitoes at bay, and a lone, two-inch wanderer made it’s way from the border of mint plants to the dark areas under the patio furniture.

We laughed about times gone by and memories of what has come before, with no fear of what was to come or what might be lurking in the unlit recesses of “under there”.

And then I felt it–a tickle, like a jute shoelace dangling on its owner’s purple chucks.  My response was not to panic, but I definitely noticed that my neighbors were not sitting close enough for their flirtatious footsy advances to reach me.

I had some more pita.

I felt the movement again.  This time, instead of a shoelace, it was more like an atomic bomb on a desert patch full of nerve endings–there was something on my leg.

I looked and jumped and smacked and screamed as the culprit scuffled around to the tune of my dinner companions’ incessant chortle.

“Thersg a COCKRACH on meh LEGH!” seemed to escape in a Twin Peaks-ian, illogical conglomeration of vowels and words.  “BAHH!” was my second, equally brilliant assessment of the situation. “GETH IST!” The third, possibly Germanic in origin.

As the bug (if you can call such power and ick-factor a mere ‘bug’…) finally removed from it’s death grip on my shin, retreated to his own minty camp, the servers came with bug spray and the owner looked up from his lap-topped, barstool for damage control.

“Yeah,” he said (because he had to say something), “you get those for free.”