₦airaland Forum

Ishilove:
Life, they say, is a battle field. In my family’s case, one of life’s many battles started roughly around the time Speedy Gonzalez, stationed in Big Sister’s, room joined forces with Pinky and the Brain in Mother’s room and tried to take over the world; their own concept of the world being confined to that cosy little bungalow located at No 10 Ayo Akanji Street, Oriental Rd, Lagos, Nigeria, Africa.

In consternation and near helplessness, we turned to The Good Book for nuggets of wisdom and direction on how to deal with our most irritating and unwelcome vagabond guests, and ultimately we were led to the Book of Death . . .

Now let’s be brutally honest with ourselves here; every family harbours kindred of Pinky and the Brain in the crannies of their abodes, but I am fairly certain that the ones living in No 10 Ayo Akanji Street were directly descended from dinosaurs.

So great were they in size and in meanness of disposition that when my Aunty Justina, who came for a visit caught a glimpse of the massive receding hindquarters of one of Speedy Gonzalez’s kinfolks, she shrieked

“Oburogwoloko, na bush rabbit una dey train for here??!!?”

Mother, discomfited, had proceeded to recount the gory tales of our torment's in the claws of these mangy cretins to Aunty, complete with graphic images of shredded clothes and books, desecrated salt containers, despoiled foodstuffs, violated Indomie cartons, half eaten shoes and a host of other soul shrinking horrors.

As fate would have it, much later that day, in the dead of night to be precise, Aunty had gone to ease herself. As she approached the toilet, she heard what sounded like inhuman screams coming from the toilet area. Lion-hearted woman that she is, she cautiously advanced towards the toilet. NEPA (for they will forever remain NEPA to my generation, no matter what name the government chooses to give them) had fortunately forgotten to do what they were best at in our neck of the jungle. As a result Aunty was able to switch the bulb in the toilet on when she got to the entrance. The screams were coming from a four-legged resident who had had the misfortune to slip and tumble into the toilet bowl on its way to an assault on our food store.

Aunty, a most pious woman, on beholding this sight and unmindful of the lateness of the hour, crowed in absolute delight:

“Retribution. Lo, the Lord hath delivered thee into mine hands for punishment!!!”

As she recounted with great relish the following day, she lifted her lappa and positioned her great African behind over the drenched rodent scrabbling frantically about in the slippery toilet bowl. The cretin, on sighting this behemoth buttocks and sensing that the end was very near indeed, resumed its pitiful wailing.

However, Aunty, bent on exacting vengeance on behalf of everybody, was deaf to its pleas. She let rip a steaming stream of fiery urine on the hapless creature who screeched even louder at this painfully undignifying treatment. To conclude the execution, Aunty flushed the nasty little beast into oblivion.

“That’s one down, about a hundred more to go,” Younger Brother remarked wryly after Aunty gleefully finished recounting her nocturnal adventure. We all solemnly agreed with him.

Our “lodgers” became bolder and bolder by the weeks and it got to a point where they stopped darting around the house and simply took to taking leisurely strolls, totally unmindful of the presence of humans. Now you might find this hard to believe, but remember Yours Truly mentioned at the beginning of this narrative that the kinfolk of Speedy Gonzalez who occupied NO 10 Ayo Akanji Street were entirely in a class of their own.

The straw that pulverised the camel’s back was The Incident at the Family Meeting.

THE INCIDENT AT THE FAMILY MEETING

It was Father’s turn to host the bi-monthly family meeting and as a result we made sure the house was more spic and span than usual.

When our brethren were assembled in the parlour and the usual high level, top secret discussions bordering on state security was in full swing, Speedy Gonzalez himself, in all his bedraggled grandeur, glided genteely past our disbelieving gaze, on his way to some errands beneath the television shelf.

Our brethren, perhaps out of embarrassment on our behalf pretended not to notice this furry intrusion and carried on as if nothing happened.

However, Speedy was not as sensitive as our brethren. To our utter vexation, he proceeded to make such a hullabaloo that Father, mortified beyond words was forced to put a halt to proceedings in order to allow Younger Brother fish out Speedy and dispatch him to his maker.

This incidence marked the beginning of the end for our malodourous, four-legged vagabond residents because Mother declared an all-out war on them after this event.

We thence tried a series of devices ranging from poisons to traps, all to no avail.

One momentous day, Yours Truly was idly leafing through a do-it-yourself handbook called The Good Book, when lo and behold, an answer to the problem of our irksome, disease carrying co-habitants was revealed.

ENTER. . . THE BOOK OF DEATH

The Good Book directed us to the Book of Death. This book, when opened and left in the path of creepy crawlies ensured that they never stepped foot again on solid ground.

Big Sister was the first to try The Book. At first it caught the occasional Cockroach {another despicable creature}, the over-adventurous wall gecko, ant and spider. When we had all but given up hope, it finally caught two of late Speedy’s kinfolks. Simultaneously! O what a happy day for Big Sister!!

With high hopes Mother took a copy of the Book to her room, and in no time Pinky and the Brain were uprooted and shipped off to the Land of No Return. In less than a month there was a noticeable decrease in the pest population in NO 10 Ayo Akanji Street, Oriental rd., Lagos, Nigeria, Africa.

The battle rages on though. It is not yet Uhuru in that cosy little bungalow where my heart lives. We often have to fortify our foodstuff with brick, mortar, concrete and The Book of Death against a possible coup by our four legged enemies. We always have to be on the alert; never allow them even the slightest advantage over us because if we do, dislodging them will be very, very difficult.

However, in all these we are more than conquerors.

THE END





Note: “Speedy Gonzalez” and “Pinky and the Brain” are the names of two very popular cartoon characters

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