 What
makes the moth an enemy like no other is its rarefied palate. No nasty man-made fibres or cheap synthetics for
this sophisticate. Only vintage cashmere and
pashmina will do. Turning its proboscis up at
the prêt a manger, this epicurean always goes for the haute couture.
For someone violently opposed to blood sports, I have recently become
positively bloodlusting. I visit my
ironmonger most days and have acquired an impressive arsenal of sprays, proffers and
traps. But nothing, nothing works. The noxious gases only induce guilt about the
ozone layer (in me, not the moths) and mothballs provide the kind of Proustian trip nobody
wants to go on. With just one whiff, you are
hurtled back, in a cloud of camphor, to the church pews and funeral parlours of your
childhood. And as for those ridiculous
lavender sachets, they make our fluttery friends think they’re on holiday in
Provence.
My local ironmonger, a fervent
believer in reincarnation, suggested that I try more humanitarian means. From the depths of his stockroom, he proudly
produced a battery-powered bug buster. This
consisted of a small plastic tube into which the insect is gently sucked so that it can be
lovingly surrendered back to nature.
‘But Mr Patel,’ I
shrieked, ‘I want those bastards to die slowly and painfully, without a burial or the
chance to say goodbye to their nearest and dearest.’
Mr Patel isn’t the only person to have reacted in this way. People are strangely sentimental when it comes to
somebody else’s creepy crawlies. ‘Oh, how could you?’ they gasp as I
discuss the next napalm attack. But I’m
beyond pity.
As the belching grows more deafening,
I’ve resorted to pursuing individuals around the flat with a rolled-up newspaper. When I make a direct hit, I leave the pulverised
body splattered all over the wall as a warning to others.
If I’m fortunate enough to catch a miscreant between my fingers, I impale its
head on the end of a cocktail stick. Rows of
these now adorn my mantelpiece. But while
they cause human guests to fall silent on the spot, nobody seems to give them a passing
thought in the insect world.
The situation is so bad that I often feel I’m in a Hitchcock film. One day, no doubt, I will be seen leaving the
house, propped up against a Rod Taylor lookalike (one lives in hope) my hair all over the
place, a mad staring look in my eyes, a stream of incoherent gibberish pouring from my
twisted mouth.
You can also take a look at previous
personal views by Harriet Ewe:
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