Parktown Prawn

I lived in South Africa for a while in the 90's. Now I hate insects, so living over there was traumatic at times as there are hundreds of species of crawling, flying and jumping things that did their best to make me feel unwelcome. Out of all of them, the Parktown Prawn was by far the scariest living beast I have ever encountered. It's kind of a cross between a cockroach and a grasshopper, copper in colour and grows to about 2 inches. Amongst other things, it eats snails, slugs and small children. It has an armour like shell which makes it hard to kill (think a miniature Predator). They jump long distances, and when pissed off, excrete a black ink that stings, stinks and stains. They are immune to any bug spray. I know this as I once emptied a can of the strongest stuff on one resulting in the Parky developing a slight cough and a hellbent objective to hurl itself at me and make me cry. The only sure way of destroying one is to either stamp on it really really hard or setting light to it. They both have their disadvantages; setting fire to one means needing a can of lighter fluid/petrol at hand, and squishing one means having to get very close to it. There is also the danger that you might just slightly injure it then it will be out for revenge, and you only get one chance with these things. I hate them, they give me the willies.

Anyway, as with most of my anecdotes, this has some relevance. Today someone, somewhere in the building has been using bug spray. My mind has now made a connection and I keep getting this horrible feeling that one of these buggers is stalking me.