Mutated Cockroaches

Another of city life's surprises has been the challenge of ridding our home of Honda-sized cockroaches.

I thought I'd done really well keeping them away lately. When we first moved in around June, I'd see one or two a day, but with determination, those times have grown much more infrequent. I have two trusty cans of Raid that I keep and multiple, very large "motels" that are placed around the house. But the buggers don't ever really go away.

Today I saw the biggest yet. Drew and I were casually sitting on the couch in the living-room when he raised his hand and pointed toward the kitchen cabinet, calmly, as if he were wanting me to catch a glimpse of a pretty sunrise or something.

The aberration jump-started a hysteria in me that not even driving can do. This thing, from it's segmented, lined body (like one of those gigantic hissing cockroaches from Africa), to the tip of it's ridiculously long antennae, had to have been 5 inches long. *shiver* And when a person can clearly see the details on a bug from another room in the house, you know it's a mutant that is probably going to come after your blood while you sleep if you don't kill it immediately.

I asked Drew to get a shoe and kill it (okay, more like screamed, begged, and commanded in a voice I didn't know I owned before today). When he seemed to forget what a shoe was and took forever finding one, the roach started to travel. I had to get the Raid. And to do that I had to go MUCH closer to the crawling creature, like get within a foot of it while it was on the wall and could jump on me and start boring into my neck. And mind you, it was not scurrying around as most small cockroaches do. Instead it ambled down the cabinet door without a care in the world. And why would it be worried? After all, it looked big enough to clock a human in the jaw.

So I sprayed the crap out of it, and it started sliding, writhing, angry, and I screamed and jumped back so as to deter it from crawling up my pants and implanting its now-poisoned eggs into my navel. And in the end I sprayed so much that I gave myself a little asthma (that's when you know the stuff's working). I also ended up having to empty all the cardboard tea boxes into a different container because the Raid had coated them so heavily.

Drew showed up with shoe in hand right as the roach dropped to the counter-top and I gave one last blood-curling cry. And he laughed at me.

But that's okay! That's okay. He may not know it, but my quick reactions keep him safe at night. And it does look like we're safe again.

For now...