Biology Lesson

We find out our permanent sites on Friday morning, which is less than three days from now. It's tough to guess the field in which I will find myself or whether I will be placed in a city or a village. However, I've heard from the staff that there's a decent chance I will be doing at least some work with an environmental organization. That's a subject that I would be excited about even though I don't have a ton of practical experience in that line of work. Fortunately, however, I have been furnished with a real life laboratory in the comfort of my own home.

You see, my room is beginning to develop an ecosystem of its own now that the hot summer weather has been ushered out and the cold nights of autumn have begun. At first, I was simply bothered by flies who came in with the breeze that cooled my room. Not a big deal -- my host family has a fly swatter and frankly, swatting flies is the kind of six-year-old amusement that never really wears off...at least in my case. However, as time passed and the nights became chilly, more species took refuge in the nooks, crannies, walls, and ceilings of my aging Soviet-built apartment building. House centipedes began to appear on the ceiling and then I began to hear the listless rattle of pacing cockroaches somewhere in the dark recesses of the apartment paneling. But there's good news! I kill the flies and cockroaches love dead animal material. It turns out that house centipedes are one of the leading predators of cockroaches and it also turns out that I am one of the leading causes of death for house centipedes. As long as the house centipedes kill the cockroaches faster than I can kill the centipedes, I win. At least until the next generation of bugs establish a new homeland in the lofty fastness of my top-floor apartment ceiling.



The good news is that Africa would have been much, much worse.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend? For now....