Wednesday, October 27, 2010

This has Me written all over it

A while back, I returned home late one Saturday evening and set about cleaning my bathroom.

(I'm not sure which is more pathetic: the fact that I can only mop my bathroom floor when my one flatmate is gone or the fact that I had nothing else to do with my Saturday evening than mop my bathroom floor)

I didn't start until about 10:30 and because I got distracted throughout, it was midnight before I finished. Feeling the satisfaction that can only come with a freshly cleaned bathroom, I was heading down the hall to my room when a most disgusting sight caught my eye.........a NACKTSCHNECKE!!!!

Translated, this means naked slug. But I prefer to call them the Queens of Slime, the Queens of Filth, the Queens of Putrescence. (Boo!  Boo!)

I know God created all creatures great and small.  But really, Lord?  Really?

Because I had never encountered this vile creature before I came to Germany and because the mind's eye can only go so far, I feel the need to provide a picture:                                                                            
Vollbild anzeigen













Yes, this is the creature that was ever so slowly making its way along the carpet of my hallway.  How it got there, I don't care to think about.
After my initial freak-out, I grabbed a giant wad of paper towels, took a couple minutes to work up my nerve, picked up the Queen of Slime, sprinted outside, and chucked it in the near-by vegetation.

Now, the thing about German doors is that almost none of them have handles on the outside. This means that any time the door shuts, it locks.  On multiple occasions, I've left the apartment door open to take the garbage out, but have always made sure to take my keys with me.  Just in cases.  And on every one of these occasions, the door has remained open.

On this one occasion, however, I, amidst my Nacktschnecke panic, did not have my keys with me.  And on this one occasion, of course, the door did not remain open but rather blew shut just as I turned to go back in.

And so, there I stood.  Locked out. At midnight.  Barefoot. Wearing shorts and a tank top in mid-50's temperatures.  With no cell phone and no memorized numbers even if I did have a phone.  With no money.

"It's ok," I thought to myself, "Flatmate Mauricio is here, and I just talked to him 15 minutes ago, so he must still be up."

Ring the doorbell....Mauricio does not appear.  Ring again...Mauricio still does not appear.  Knock on the door....no Mauricio.  Repeat the process, with increasingly longer doobell-rings and increasingly more violent door-knocks. Become increasingly panicked considering my lack of anyone to contact, anywhere to go, or any way to get there.

Finally, after 15 minutes or so, my pajama-clad hero, Mauricio, entered the scene and let me in. I thanked my lucky stars and went to bed with a confirmed conviction that Nacktschecken are, indeed, the bane of my existence.

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