A Dragon in Sheep’s Clothing

Ack! I found a roach in my kitchen yesterday! Actually, it fell off when I pick up a roll of paper towels that had fallen between the microwave and the wall. It hit my hand on the way down, and all I saw was a big dark bug flailing through the air.

I’ve realized that bugs make me swear. Not all bugs, just creepy ones. Roaches in particular, and some spiders. And centipedes, but those were more of a problem up north than they are here.

So here I am swearing in my kitchen at this roach, and when I scare it out from behind a box, I see that it’s red. I’ve never had that kind before, although I’m told they’re common here. I’ve always thought roaches were brown-ish, but maybe those are “water bugs.” That’s the kind that invaded my dorm room my last year of college (the dorm was across the street from the water, of course).

I manage to partially squish the roach with the nearest thing at hand that will let me jab at it from a distance — a dowel rod. It limps away along the moulding where the cabinets meet the floor. That’s when I realize that the moulding is not flush against the cabinets, it has a quarter-inch gap where the roach crawls in to hide.

I don’t have any roach spray (yet), so I grab the Tilex shower cleaner. I figure that since bugs breath through their bodies, all I have to do is smother it in a nasty chemical, and the Tilex is potent. I spray and spray. The roach makes a brief struggle and then falls behind the moulding and never comes out again.

I win! Sort of. The corpse is probably still in the moulding. I was too creeped out to go back and try to get it out. And they say that when you see one, there are more lurking in dark palces that you never see. Blech.

So I have a new project now: caulk the moulding around the cabinets. No, the roach probably didn’t get in from under the cabinets, but it will certainly make me feel better, and I can seal away that roach from last night in a tomb of goo. The cabinets also have a gap where they meet the wall, and lots of little crawlies could potentially hide in there.

*shiver* And here I thought that the spiders were going to be the bug of choice in my new place. Nasty black spiders, the kind that are just big enough to be creepy, very quick on the run, and very flexible — they curl up when you try to squish them, and they seem to escape the worst of the blow and run away. Squishy, fast, and creepy: not a good combination!

 I’d almost reather deal with the silverfish from my last place. At least those were only squishy and fast, and not so creepy. Besides, my cat liked to catch and eat them.