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Monday, June 13, 2005
Big C
Recently I was in the hardware store waiting to get the ear of an employee who stood listening to a drama queen, "Oh, I'm so ashamed! If my poor dear dead mother knew that her daughter had found a cockroach in the house, I do think she'd roll over in her grave." Yeah, right. Ha.
Well, I have not actually ever seen a live cockroach until last night, not once in my whole life. But now I live in the south and it's the steamy summer time. I have ants in the house, and last night I saw a cockroach conservatively as long as my incdex finger. I didn't think regular cockroaches got that big, maybe the Madagascar hissing kind, but not the run-of-the-mill household variety. Oh, well, now I've seen one and I'm still alive and I guarantee that my mother is not rolling around in her grave over it. Actually the cockroach was so big, I thought probably a person could saddle it up and give pony rides for kids. What a whopper. I was afraid to try to kill it for fear it turned on me and beat me to death with it's super-long feelers. It was high up on the wall over the stove.
For all I know, my house is just swarming with cockroaches I have not met owing to the fact that I'm not up and about at night. I only saw one, but he must have friends. I found him because yesterday I was sick most of the day, didn't eat. Last night I was having another readathon. About 2:00A.M. suddenly I felt better and was hungry. I decided that a bacon/lettuce/tomato sandwich was indicated and went to the kitchen, got the ingredients out of the refrigerator, turned toward the stove, and there was the BIG C up on the wall.
At first I didn't have courage to approach the stove thinking the bug might jump down off the wall and bite me. The remembering that I was hungry, I went toward the stove and was relieved that Big C ran up the wall and disappeared into a tiny crack. so he's still here. Doubtless I'll see him again. Maybe sometime I'll get up the nerve to whack him. Oooh. That would be a lot of bug squish.
Many years ago my sister lived in Spanish Harlem for a while. She had lots of horror stories some of which involved cockroaches which she claimed to at times swarm over her kitchen floor so numerously that they left no place to set her foot down on a non-roach spot. She tried every single anti-roach preparation available on the market at that time and none were successful. Someone told her that the only way to get rid of them was to create an absence of food, to maintain sterile technique like in a lab. She conscientiously tried that and it didn't help. The roaches thrived on chlorine bleach.
Last night, watching the giant cockroach, I remembered my sister's dilemma. That's one reason I didn't try to kill the thing. I had that fatalistic feeling, "Once they're onto you, you've had it. If they ever arrive, they never leave." I surely do not want to have to pick my way over the floor through clicking, hissing piles of hungry cockroaches, hope it doesn't come to that. I suppose I could call a pest exterminating company and pay them to poison my environment.
Monday, June 13, 2005 - 9:51 PM
Name:
Tessa
I don't mind big hairy spiders, until they fall in my bath, that is. But I think I would scrreeeeeamm if I saw a giant cockroach on the wall!
I watched a television documentary once where they left a time-lapse camera in a kitchen. It made your hair stand on end to see all the little creatures coming out at night.
Wednesday, June 15, 2005 - 12:49 PM
Name:
doubledog
When I told Lydia my cockroach story, she laughed and said, "That's the south for you." She's lived down here for almost five years and claims to have seen some impressive roaches. Her cat likes to find one and play with it. Lydia says she's come down to breakfast more than once to find an incapacitated cockroach on it's back, minus legs, but still alive and having to be disposed of.
My first southern insect problem arose five years ago the first time we went to the beach on an island off Charleston, South Carolina. Beautiful, beautiful island resort right on the ocean. Gorgeous, very-expensive place. The second day I woke up to find ants all over the kitchen, lines of them busily toiling to and from their secret hideout. There was nothing for them to eat in the kitchen. I had cleaned up after dinner. They were going back and forth from the drain in the sink. Must have been some food residue down there. Nothing I did stopped those ants. Eventually I called an exterminator who got rid of the ants but told me that his job was secure, that roaches and ants are a fact of life in the hot and steamy south.
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