All creatures great and really small

My appointment involves some travel around the Victoria Division, and on trips further from home I will stay at a motel overnight if it’s just too much driving for one day. The quiet of a motel room often allows me to open my laptop and catch up on emails or do some writing (like this article). Although, depending on my timing and obligations, sometimes I can get out and wander around whatever town I’ve landed in and see the sights.

I’ve found that some towns don’t have many sights. Recently I stayed in a town where the ‘sights’ were the silos and the playground built by Rotary. Dinner was an interesting adventure – nothing open after 6pm, and not even a fish ’n’ chip shop in town!

The motel room was, well, adequate, and I wasn’t scared of the cockroaches in my room because I knew the spiders would eat them. When they weren’t dining on the ants. Or the mosquitoes.

I recalled the tradition (or myth) that says St Francis preached to the birds about how God cared for them and also for the sweet singing of their praises. I figured I could give it a crack with what I had at hand.

“Blessed are the cockroaches, for they shall eat small, flea-like mite things that crawl in the dust and are probably living in this mattress I’m about to sleep on.

“I pray, my tiny six-legged, hard-backed friend, that you dine well and protect me from the slight bite of the mite. I acknowledge the fact you have survived countless millennia on this planet and can survive for days even without a head, which is pretty impressive. Thou art wonderfully made, and I salute thee.

“Brother and sister ant, while inspired by your work ethic and the methodical and systematic way you seek food, I implore you to heed the word of the Lord as presented in the Gospel of Matthew. He writes: ‘Do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?… But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.’

“I pray that you find rest from your work – especially for about the next 12 hours if you don’t mind – and find rest in God alone.

“And the humble mosquito, what can I say about you, thou flying, buzzing, dive-bombing, stinging, screaming, pointy-nosed bringer of pain?

“Thou art spawn of Satan and deserve naught but the bottom of my size-10 rubber thong descending as if from on high and delivering due and warranted retribution on thy being.

“May thy tiny, slender, segmented body be torn asunder and thy whiny buzzing sound cease for evermore or resound in hell from whence thou surely comest.”

I felt better after those prayers (although I also wondered why I’d slipped into language from the 17th century). Anyway, I slept well and wasn’t bothered by insects at all during the night. I suspect the lizard in the corner got most of them.

Major Mal Davies is the Assistant Divisional Commander for the Victoria Division