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Kitchen Table Still Life, Nairobi style: biro (for scale), shattered pieces of Cockroach, and a parasitic worm that has just squirmed out of the Cockroach’s ruptured entrails onto my kitchen table top; Nairobi; probably about 1980.
I saw the Cockroach running across the table as I came into the kitchen to make breakfast, and a blow swiftly killed it. Going on preparing breakfast, I noticed waving movements out of the corner of my eye and on closer inspection watched fascinated as the worm writhed its way out of the roach’s corpse, only to die itself a few moments later, in the arid and completely alien environment of my kitchen table top.
Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window … if you’re into this sort of thing …
THE ARCHIVE KENYA SERIES
I’m re-posting photographs that I took in Kenya over 30 years ago. You can find more context here . Click onto the “Archive Kenya” tag (below) to see more of these film images from Kenya.
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FATman Photos 
Ugh. I applaud your objectivity and confess that I don’t share it. Moving on…. 😉
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Love “Ugh”! And, well, I do have some background in the Life Sciences … and I was younger then … 😉 …..
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Yes, the circle of life certainly does entertain some strange tangents. Was this, um, one of your fonder memories from your time in dear Kenya?
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It was a part of Life’s Rich Tapestry 🙂 🙂 🙂 !!! But you know me, I’m a naturalist and a lover of Nature, so the interest this aroused completely outweighed any feelings of revulsion.
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We are truly cut from similar cloth. I’ve been deep into the natural world as long as I can remember, even studying the insect parts in goldfish food!
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Magnify it greatly and you would have props for a bad science-fiction movie. Actually, this is fascinating.
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Yes, it is fascinating – the parasite abandons the host when the host dies. I had a similar experience with a Little Swift, a member of a bird family that have their legs so far back on their undersides that they cannot take off from the ground – they have to drop into the air from the buildings and cliffs on which they nest.
This bird had hit my lounge windows in Nairobi, and ended up alive but stranded, flat out, on the floor of my verandah. I knew that throwing it up into the air would get it airborne again (which it did), but as I picked it up ectoparasites in the feathers on its neck rushed up my bare arms – again, the host was being attacked, and they left the sinking ship as soon as possible.
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Just as fascinating as the photograph. Thank you.
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