Should I be freaked out? I am going to Egypt next week, setting of the original Ten Plagues and am witnessing my own plagues at work in London.
It all started a week ago,a rotten stench enveloped my office, akin to someone microwaving brussels sprouts – not the most pleasant sensation for your nostrils if you can imagine for a moment.
If anything would activate your gag reflex, this was it as it grew progressively worse, Rentokil examined the area but nothing could be found, it was above our heads in the rafters above our polystyrene fitted ceiling panels.
A few days later you could hear tiny little thuds. Nothing alarming, we usually hear giant thuds from crows and gulls doing the can-can across our rooftops. But then a scream escaped from a colleague – a maggot had dropped on their desk.
Then it went ballistic, every half a minute maggots begun raining down from gaps in the ceiling tiles, literally raining maggots, very biblical you’ll agree.
They don’t like to be picked up either, squirming away from my grip, the solution I found was a post it note and dabbed each one up until I had the sticky back of the post it crawling in plump little bodies. I got about 50 in all and I nested them outside.
Bank holiday weekend then be felled us, the Rentokil guy said the maggots would form a chrysalis then emerge as beautiful blue-bottles. I envisaged a scene out of The Flies if Hitchcock had made a film about flies instead of birds, myself cast as Tippi Hedren, in a pale green two piece swatting away as they make a nuisance of themselves around my head.
No such luck, Tuesday morning came and I entered the office to a floor strewn with blue bottle corpses and a few victorious ones zipping about the room. Luckily we had a hot weekend and the heat must have fried them as when I tried collecting their bodies they would disintegrate under the tissue paper. I went about selecting the music for their funeral and then proceeded to use the Metro newspaper to deal with the other bluebottles who were having a jolly time of it (which was quite disrespectful of them, lauding it over their deceased counterparts).
If that whole episode wasn’t enough we then found a rat in the works kitchen – I’m gonna need a weekend newspaper to tackle this.
My maggoty friends
