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Training day 25: reveille, cockroach style

The picture you’re seeing to the right is the actual size of the cockroach that awoke me from my peaceful slumber at 2:00am this morning. He may not seem like much, but wait until the little bastard crawls into your ear and then tell me you’re not envisioning a thousands eggs being laid in your head. It’s maddening, I tell you. Maddening!

I jolted awake, feeling a slight tickling sensation in my right ear and hearing sounds resembling fingernails on wood. I spat a silent prayer to the Gods in hopes someone had broke into my room to put me out of my DI school misery, but no such luck. Something was in my ear! I popped out of bed like it was Government Cheese Wednesday Giveaways and raced to the mirror… like I could see a damn thing with the small cosmetic mirror I use to shave my head. The creature continued to torment me as I clawed uselessly at my ear trying to get a better look.

I rifled through my hygiene kit for tweezers, Q-tips, or a .38 snub nose but nothing seemed to wrest the [possible] arachnid from my head. The thought of some eight legged freak invading my person grossed me out. I gagged. I knew at any moment the creature would finish chewing through my ear drum and gain free access to my brain. I had to take drastic action, so I keeled my head to the right and began hopping vigorously up and down. When hopping alone didn’t work after a few seconds I added random ear tugs in assorted directions, as if that would help. It did not. I had to get serious, so I started smacking the side of my head like an evening with Ike and Tina Turner.

So now I’m hopping in front of the bathroom mirror in my underwear, an assortment of failed extraction tools scattered across the counter in front of me, and smacking the living shit out of myself. My enemies rejoice. It’s not often I take care of your dirty work.

But the smacking worked, at the cost of an extremely sore neck later this afternoon, and out popped the tiniest, most menacing cockroach I’ve ever seen. He was clinging stubbornly to what appeared to be some brain matter, but my vision was blurred as the whole ordeal had gotten me quite shaken up so I can’t be too sure. I seized my tactical advantage of holding higher ground and immediately smashed him on the counter top. So long, Mr. Cockroach-in-my-ear, and have a bad day!

I then turned to a detailed inspection of my bedding and rack with clean findings. It was an isolated case. What a relief! I wasn’t living in filth and my personal hygiene was no longer in doubt, so I chalked the entire incident up to crazy voodoo magic and laid back down.

But the skittering of thousands of exoskeletal legs still haunt me…

Tonight, I sleep with my stocking cap on.