The cockroach (lat. Blatella)

Sitting in the courtyard of the Pearl Inn in Fort Portal we look fascinated at a lizard that, at a distance of four metres from Peter, is ending the life of a cockroach. With his mouth the lizard bites the struggling beast, puts it on its back and starts eating the soft abdomen. Using our binoculars we observe the drama so close, that we see how the intestines disappear in the lizard's mouth piece by piece. Even when the belly is half-empty, the cockroach doesn't give up. Paws and antenna persevere in their attempt to escape the inevitable end, as if there are reasons to live when half of your body has disappeared.

Our first encounter with the cockroach was in a run-down hotel in Bulgaria. A tiny, reddish coloured scrag just about three centimetres long jumped from behind the toilet when we brought something. From there we met them more often: a few in Turkey, some more in Syria and Jordan, and even more in Egypt. Always in hotels and guesthouses, although never when we bushcamped. We encountered them mostly in the not so very clean toilets and kitchens, sometimes in our room. The majority big as a thumbnail, a few the size of a thumb. The latter are the ones that cause the loudest noise when you stand on them in the dark.

Tropical Africa crawls with cockroaches. The warm and humid climate is an ideal breeding ground for them. Our initial curiosity for the animal changes into disgust after a while.
Most toilets in Uganda consists of a deep hole in the ground, an old fashioned dung-hole. When we shine into the hole with a light, we see that a few metres down millions of cockroaches feed themselves with the different kinds of excrements. After the peeing they crawl for joy whilst rolling about in the fresh puddle of urine. Their favourite pastime seems to be being shitted on the head (excuse the language, but they ask for it), their delight knows no limits. In our imagination we hear the most impertinent ones call up: "We want more, we want more!"

Since we are regular witnesses of their gory practice, we got convinced that the cockroach is our enemy. It is the carrier of fungi, bacteria and illnesses. A lot of people are allergic to the animal, which is caused by the fact that the cockroach gives up the food he eats and partly eats it again. The remains are brimful of salmonella. Probably it's not very wise of us to declare the cockroach our enemy. The animal has existed for over 300 million years and can easily do without food for forty days. Twenty cockroaches only need one drop of grease to have a feast for four weeks.

Moreover, there are always more of them than meets the eye: for every one you see 99 remain hidden. It's a very strong enemy: during the last decades it has become resistant again a lot of pesticides and has been found jumping for joy in strongly polluted areas of nuclear plants. Researchers, probably feeling the same disgust we do, put a living cockroach in a microwave-oven for two minutes. The animal was a bit stupefied, but walked away from the deadly micro-waves alive and well. Fellow habitants of moderate climates, be happy with your climate! Because twelve hours at four degrees Celsius below zero is enough to eliminate this survivor. So give your central heating a rest for a day or so next winter and you might save our planet.

We wake up from our day-dreaming and witness how the lizard takes one last bite, so the entire cockroach is in his mouth now. Just like a snake does, his loot glides down his throat with jerky swallowing movements, until it's completely gone.

We loves lizards very much..