Basket.

Me vs Mothra*, Prologue

I had just finished composing an email this evening at about 8 o'clock when a large, winged object made its appearance in the room; upon closer inspection I discovered it was a moth. We do see them at times around the house, but this one was of an impressive size; it had a wingspan of over 7cm, probably closer to eight, and that is, to make a bit of an understatement, a rather prodigious girth for an insect.

I was mildly surprised, but was then on the point of leaving the room, so I did not much care for it, and I do not fear moths, in any case, for they are absolutely harmless.

A little while later, I went upstairs to the bathroom to take a bath. While within, I saw something flutter along the door. Fearing it was my old nemesis Nauphoeta cinerea cinereous (ie the common house cockroach), I imeediately stepped back and gave the door a swift kick. To my surprise, the moth fluttered out, and promptly put itself to rest on the tiled wall next to the bathtub.

Now, as I have said earlier, I do not fear moths, and know perfectly that they are absolutely harmless to human beings. But having a creature of such size nearby, with the admittedly irrational threat of it trying to land on you in the deep recesses of your subconcious, is a somewhat unnerving experience. As such, I resolved to get rid of the creature. Thus began Round 1.

Round One

I sought to dislodge the beast from its comfortable place of residence, and hopefully evict it from the room altogether, by use of the powerful water jets the shower could muster when turned to the highest setting. In the first I was successful; it immediately flew off the wall - but straight at me.

Now, even the most rational human being has his/her moments of panic and indecisiveness, and I am hardly the best specimen of a rational human being. The insect, I knew to be completely harmless, but it was big, and the fact that it was big was the only thing that occupied my mind as it pursued a straight course towards my person. As such, I found myself taking recourse of the utterly useless action of waving the showerhead at it wildly. Fortunately, this had the effect of diverting it away from my face, and it came to rest upon another part of the bathroom.

Despite it being the enemy who had beat a retreat, I knew I had come off it second-best. The moth had triumphed over indomitable human spirit.

Round Two

Seeking amends for my humiliating reverse at the hands of an insect several score hundred times smaller than myself, I snatched up an old copy of Readers' Digest lying conveniently about, deciding that the best course of action was to exterminate the brute. And I watched it, as it lay perfectly still, on the wall, waiting...

Until I saw that it was in a rather secluded and difficult-to-reach place in the bathroom, that I would cause a great commotion if I failed to kill it on the first attempt and that it could not harm me anyway. So, not wishing to create trouble where there was little or none previously, I left the peaceable creature to its own devices and went about my own business, albeit all the while watching it nervously.

Epilogue(?)

For all I know, it could still be there now. I have no business to go and check, and I shall not. So ends my great saga, for now.

*For the uneducated, the giant moth in one of the old Godzilla movies