Do you remember this blog from Mummy McTavish? It was just crying out for a response of some kind. Note the picture accompanying this blog: that is Mummy Mc Tavish about 26 years ago. She is a bonny little thing, isn't she? She didn't always have a cockroach hanging out of her mouth. Not always, but she did at least once think one was worth a taste.When Mummy McTavish and her sister Chimera were very little we lived in an old Queenslander house. It was a very old timber building and let the breezes and everything else in as old houses often do. One morning after Mr Sunshine had taken himself off to uni ( USA translation: varsity) I noticed a large dead cockroach flat on its back beside the kitchen stove. There was a cocky bait under the stove. I got the dustpan to pick it up (the cockroach, not the bait), but then it started wriggling its legs like crazy and I got nervous. Previous bad experiences with creepy bugs had taught me to expect them to revive suddenly and either scamper up a broom handle or fly with pinpoint accuracy and great speed at a target between my eyes. So, I am ashamed to admit my first act of cowardice was to leave it there and give it time to die undisturbed. That was my first act of cowardice, but it gets worse.
At some point baby Mummy McTavish woke up and after whatever we did in the mornings back then she crawled her way into the kitchen. I didn't follow her because I was doing something in the living room and the house was child safe, at least it was usually child safe, but not this day.
Next instant there was a very prolonged, startled scream from the kitchen. I rushed in to see baby Mummy McTavish sitting beside the stove with only the back legs of this humongous cockroach sticking out of her mouth and IT WAS STILL WRIGGLING. Mother love kicked in and I rushed forward to rescue my baby, pull the disgusting creature from her mouth and comfort her. Actually no. I rushed forward, realised that there was no way that I could touch that thing with my bare hand and ran off to get a tissue. That was my second act of cowardice. I did get the tissue and even then it took all the mother love I could muster to get that disgusting creature out of her mouth.
Of course Mummy McTavish was far too young to remember this experience. Sadly, I can never forget it.
Yes, Mummy McTavish, you are right. Mothers do know too much to be let loose in blogland.
Just goes to show how neglected I was, and I wasnt even a middle child yet! Somehow I knew that was the "incident" you would blog about. I shall remember that you live by the rule "once you are accused for something you havent done, you might as well do it anyway". Still knowing I did that was in the back of my mind when as an adult I had to make the decision to eat a witchety grub or not. Figured I had eaten worse, why not!
ReplyDeleteGross!!
ReplyDeleteOnce when my younger sister Ducky was little, she ate a grasshopper and a caterpillar! YUCK!!
LOL - oh I'm still laughing!!
ReplyDeleteIt's so much fun to read both your blogs - gives me a new insight into Mummy Mctavish!! I remember Zai once ate some dog faeces - that was truely disgusting - I was so sick with morning sickness as well...not fun!
Great story and very funny.
ReplyDeleteBabies have to taste all these different things - or how else can they say, when they grow up, "No way am I going to eat any more of that... it tastes like partially croaked cockroach."
(I would have run for the tissue first too - I really can't stand cockroaches.)