One late evening I heard the whirr of tiny wings and briefly glimpsed a tiny brown object whizzing past. I froze where I stood. If there is one thing I am loathe to share a room with that one thing is definitely a flying cockroach. The flying object could have been some other insect of course, but my bet was on it being a cockroach. My plan for the evening had been to write for a while before bedtime, but I had to put that aside and deal with the matter at hand.

I hit upon a simple strategy. Switch off all lights in the bedroom, leave the bedroom door open and hope the cockroach, or whatever kind of insect it was, would be drawn to the light on the landing and leave of its own volition. Accordingly I killed the lights and to be on the safe side, quickly jumped under the covers and waited with bated breath. Though I kept my eyes glued to the doorway, I saw no one leaving, and anyway soon fell fast asleep.

Next morning the L&M was informed of matters and he went to check the room and flush out the hidden cockroach ruffian (what if it returned the next night?) bent on scaring his wife and taking it to task. So sweet, right? My hero! Hero or not, he couldn’t find the villain cockroach anywhere or any other insect for that matter.

Returning upstairs after my morning chores were done I heard the same whirr of wings and stopped short. Ahh, hiding behind the landing curtains, are we? I cautiously shook the curtains. Something fell out and I nimbly jumped aside. No detestable cockroach this. It was a pretty moth. It rose and flew off with me in pursuit. Hey, wait for me!

Finally it heard my pleas and stopped and I took a picture. I wasn’t too happy that it chose a dark, dusty and cobwebby corner of a window sill. But then what do moths know that pictures go up on blogs and that the blog owner is not too happy for the world, or the tiny part of it that reads her blogs, to know that she has been shirking!

Anyway, here it is:

© Shail Mohan 2021