Cockroaches

So our apartment has cockroaches. I’m pretty good with most bugs, ticks freak me out a bit and I don’t really like the centipedes here.... but I absolutely HATE cockroaches.I blame my fear on the time during my freshmen year at Hartwick that I was trying to kill a large cockroach and it flew off the wall and into my face. Not fun. Our apartment has cockroaches in only one specific place. The bathroom.

And, since cockroaches are nocturnal, they’re only out and about at night. So that means going to the bathroom in the middle of the night is a very frightening experience. I always turn on the light and carefully inspect my surroundings, including the toliet paper. The first cockroach I found in our apartment was on our toilet paper. The second one I found on the wall next to our mirror. Both the first and second cockroaches escaped before they could be killed, so I spent the rest of the night waiting for them to come seek their vengeance on us by crawling onto my pillow and waving their antennae in my face when I woke up. Ryan found one in our bathroom one night and managed to kill it- in the process breaking our shelves and knocking a lot of things down. It was alright though. The shelves went back together and it was worth the mess to know a cockroach was dead.

The other night, however, one took me by surprise. I was washing my hands when I glanced in the mirror and saw one run across the door. He was just hanging out on the door a few feet from the floor when I turned around, and he was clearly mocking me. I normally call Ryan into the bathroom to deal with our little intruders while I try to stay out of the way. But this clever beast had trapped me in the bathroom with him. There was no way I could open the door and call Ryan in to give me a hand. The bug would just have run off as soon as I took my eyes off him and bolted off to place unknown- like my pillow, which is only about 10 feet from the bathroom. Much too close to comfort.

So the cockroach and I surveyed each other for a few moments while I looked around for useful weapons. Nothing. I’d picked up earlier and all our shoes were right where they belonged- under the bed. They’d have been useful, but again, I couldn’t open the door! This cockroach was a clever little creature, and I swear it was mocking me as it wandered back and forth on the door. I took a quick inventory of all bottles and containers, but they wouldn’t work either. All the bottles were rounded and none had a nice flat bottom or side with which to smush a cockroach. That and the hard plastic these things are made out of has a nasty habit of shattering which makes a big mess. And this was before my birthday package arrived, so I didn't have the electronic bug zapper yet.

Then I spotted it. The hair spray.

Hair spray is a pretty effective bug killer. The sticky hair spray clings to the bug and as it hardens it cuts off the bug’s air supply- unpleasant but effective. So I grabbed the hairspray and went after the evil intruder. I have to say it was quite a battle. He bolted to the side and then tried to bolt downwards to try to run under the door and ~GASP~ into our bedroom. I managed to drive him away from the bottom part of the door with a concentrated blast of hairspray, and the battle finally ended by the shelves in our bathroom when he stopped running (I didn’t dare turn away from him until he was unable to flee, just in case) at which point I opened the door and wailed ‘“Cockroach!”.

My hero of a husband woke up at once and grabbed a shoe to come to my rescue. He said that he didn’t need to hit it, the thing was already dead, but I made him hit it anyways. Just in case. Then we flushed the body down the toilet.

Victory to the humans (and the hairspray)! I’m still nervous I will wake up one night to see this bug’s brother peering at me in an angry sort of way. I’m really hoping cockroaches are not an issue in our new apartment.

Ryan just pointed out to me that I wrote a post about a battle of wits with a cockroach. I realize that it may sound silly, but I swear that thing was smart. And you can’t underestimate cockroaches- they’re the ones that will still be around after the rest of life on earth has been wiped out. So I’m posting this anyways, even if it does make me sound a little foolish. Cockroaches are evil, and I’m sticking to my story. I hope you all enjoyed it.