Something Stirring in the Night...
Thursday, September 8, 2005 Posted: 12:04 AM JST
This is not a news article. But it is such a weird story I just have to jot it down and tell somebody. It is now in the middle of the night. A strange sound in my kitchen woke me up. Although it is already September it is still hot and humid, so I sleep in the living room, close to where fresh air circulates between windows. This is not too far away from the kitchen where the sound that woke me up came from.
I listened to it for a little while, trying to figure out the exact direction the sound came from, and what kind of sound it was. I collect the old styrofoam food trays that Japanese supermarkets use for packaging meat. Once in a few weeks I return them to the supermarket for recycling. Tonight about eight of them lay in my kitchen. They were small, a little bigger than an outstretched adult hand.
It sounded like someone was very slowly and carefully breaking them, or at least bending them. I live alone, so I felt a bit uncomfortable. I just couldn't figure out how this sound came about. I stood up in the dark and very slowly walked to the kitchen. Step by step, so as not to warn whatever was there. For a moment I thought that perhaps my cat Tiger was doing something. But I know the kind of sounds he makes while doing all the things he does, and this just didn't sound like anything he does.
I was right. Tiger was nowhere to be seen, but the sound continued when I got to the kitchen. It definitely came from the little corner of the water basin where I kept the styrofoam trays. It was the weirdest sound. I turned on the light and it immediately stopped. Very carefully I looked at the trays from all angles, but it didn't make any sense. There was nothing, and they were not in a position where they were slowly falling or something.
So I picked one up, and looked at it. Suddenly something dark, about the size of a large eraser, speeded away like crazy. I almost jumped back. Shocked. But I had discovered the source of the weird sound. A cockroach was eating the trays...
It is the most surreal experience I have ever had. Just imagine that the sound of an eating cockroach wakes you up out of a sound sleep. His chewing was loud enough to persuade me to investigate in the middle of the night. I live near train tracks with freight trains passing by all night. Even with open windows, I sleep right through the noise they produce. But this greedy cockroach woke me up.
Man, this is weird. And very unnerving. I can't stand cockroaches. Especially not in my kitchen. Yuck!
I wrote this at 1 AM midnight, an hour later than the 12:04 AM JST time stamp on this entry. It turns out I had forgotten to adjust the blog for Summer savings time.
Keywords: special_report
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