Today’s Adventure: The Most Terrifying Thing That Has Ever Happened To Me

Moldovan sheets are a little different than Amerian sheets. It’s largely because they are meant to be put on a futon each night, not left on a bed like we do in America. They also have a sheet that is really a huge blanket-shaped bag and you put your comforter inside of it. This is totally weird at first until you think about how much effing work it would be to wash a comforter by hand every time it starts to smell less than fresh. And how often it might smell that way if no one is really showering before sleeping under it.

So I have a set of these sheets on my bed where I sleep. I make it every morning like a real bed (it’s not really a bed – see my previous post) and I have a stack of books that I use as a night-stand next to it and everything. It’s nice to snuggle up in those sheets after being gone for a few days in the capital or visiting other sites.

The night my parents first came to my village, they went to sleep in the room that my host family had offered to them in their larger house. After a long day of translating and worrying that my parents would fall off a cart or die of dehydration, I was really ready to hit the hay. I snuggled down into the covers (this was before I got my air mattress) and closed my eyes.

Then I heard what could only be the sound of a rather large insect scurrying across my comforter. I swiped at the blanket but didn’t feel anything. I waited in the dark for a minute or two but didn’t hear anything. Maybe it was just the sheets settling, I thought. But then, not a minute later I head it again. I swiped again at it but felt nothing. I clicked on the light, expecting to see some terrifying tarantula on my sheets but there was nothing. I looked in the corners, under the blankets, everywhere, but there was nothing. Still slightly disconcerted, I turned off the light and settled back down again, telling myself it was just the sheets settling. Then I heard it again.

A little freaked out now, I turned on the light again and gave it another look. I picked up my comforter in one hand and was looking under it when suddenly I felt it. A giant movement directly under my hand on the comforter. Whatever it was was INSIDE the sheet cover for the comforter. It had been crawling right next to my face with just the sheet between us.

Wanting to do the most constructive thing, I screamed and hurled the blanket away from me. I debated my options while putting on my snow boots, which I always do when there is a large bug introduced to the situation. For some reason, snow boots seem like they will protect my feet more than regular shoes should something need to be squished. I had three choices: I could sleep without the blanket and leave the infested comforter until tomorrow in the daylight hours. This ran the risk of the arthropod in question escaping and running amok in my house. I could look in the sheets and try to get the bug out and kill them. Or I could kill them in the sheet and then excavate their dead bodies.

I don’t think that anyone makes their BEST decisions when it’s 11:30pm and all you want to do is sleep. If it were another day and time I might not have chosen to do what I did. But I did have another motivation. I’m terrified of spiders. Any other bug is not awesome but manageable. But I could not see this bug and knew only from the movement I’d felt under my hand that it was at least an inch or two long. And what if it were a spider? If it were a spider I would probably have a stroke if it ran at me, even in my snow boots. So the prospect of letting it escape into my house, or of sticking my face into a pocket of sheets where it was no doubt building an evil lair seemed equally impossible. So I had to go for option 3.

I pulled the comforter in it’s sheet-bag thing onto the floor where I located the bug again by running my hand over the outside of the sheet until it moved. And with a squeak of terror I stomped with all the force I could muster onto the lump in the blankets.

The really terrifying thing is that one stomp didn’t do it. So I stomped again. Adding to my terror (this is really gross, I know), a blush of brownish fluid suddenly soaked through my sheet, telling me that the bug in question was mortally wounded. After a few seconds it stopped moving and I was free to fish it out.

I still found this part to be really hard, though. Because honestly, even a dead gigantic spider is terrifying to me. I think I would rather find a dead human body in my house than find a dead giant spider. I’m serious. So for this part I also put on gloves. So now it’s about midnight on a Sunday, I’m wearing running shorts, a tank top, giant snow boots and work gloves. I slowly lifted the flat that opens the end of the sheets to where the comforter is, on the opposite end of where I had just murdered something large.

The first thing I saw was something huge and black down by my end of the comforter, telling me that there was MORE THAN ONE. Oh my god. The good news was that it wasn’t a spider. It was a gigantic beetle.  About an inch and a half long with spindly little legs. I had seen this type of beetle before one time when I looked under my house with a flashlight. I was immediately relieved that it wasn’t an arachnid (I assumed the other one wasn’t either, since I don’t think that spiders and beetles hang out much). I scooped the first beetle (this one fully alive but too stupid to run away) into a coffee cup that he couldn’t climb the sides of. Then I worked farther into the sheets and found the murder scene. He was all crunched up but, amazingly, still looked like a beetle. He could have been sleeping, just on his back with all his legs curled up. Their plate-armor exo-skeletons are really incredible. But there was bug juice everywhere. Actually it was Beetlejuice (haha!). I scooped up the corps and put it in the coffee mug with its living brethren, which I considered appropriate punishment for scaring me. Then I pulled the comforter out of the sheets and slept with it out of the sheets that night. It’s a white comforter so I would be able to spot anything suspicious on it in case I were visited again by the insect kingdom.

The next morning I released the living beetle into the wild where he was promptly snatched up and eaten by a bird.

Noapte Buna!