小名: Cockroaches

29.5.08

Cockroaches

Doesn't that word send a shiver down your spine? I have recently discovered that I have quite a strong visceral reaction to cockroaches. The word for "cockroach" in Japanese is "gokiburi." I think that word has a very disgusting, vile ring to it-- quite appropriate for the foul insect it represents.

Tuesday night I bought eggplant, green pepper, carrot, and ground beef to make a Chinese dish called, roughly translated, "fish-taste eggplant." I found a sauce packet to make the dish in my local grocery store (who'da thunk it?) and I was super-excited to try it out. Since I had veggies left over, Wednesday night I made a yummy concoction of eggplant, green pepper, garlic, and spaghetti sauce to pour over rice. After putting the soiled frying pan and utensils in the sink, I decided to let the dishes sit while I ate my food and watched a movie. Two hours later, the movie was finished, I was stuffed, and I was not looking forward to cleaning the grease and veggie pieces off of all the dishes in the sink. I walk into the kitchen, turn on the light, look in the sink, and scream. There is a big, brown, shiny cockroach sitting in the net used to put unwanted veggie pieces in. My fear quickly turned to anger-- I'm angry that there's cockroaches in my apartment and angry that I squealed like a junior high schooler. Fuming, I grabbed a paper towel and started cursing the cockroach out, psyching myself up to try to smash it. In the time it took me to get the courage up to kill it, it had started on its escape plan. "Screw this," I said out loud. "I'm getting a shoe." I ran to my entryway and grabbed the first shoe I could, then ran back to the kitchen where the cockroach had, by this time reached the front of the cabinets under the sink and was making his way to a small gap in the cabinet doors. "Oh no you don't!" I yelled, opened the door, and tried to smash him. The fast little sucker got away and quickly ran behind the cabinet through a tiny crevice between the sink unit and the wall. Cursing, I ran to my stash of lethal chemicals, grabbed a bottle of insecticide, and fumigated the crevice with as much bug spray as my eyes could handle.

Defeated, I turned back to the sink to start doing the dishes. I lifted up the frying pan to find ANOTHER cockroach. I squealed again, then sprayed the living daylights out of it with the can of spray that was still conveniently next to me. As my skin began to tingle from the chemicals, I grabbed a paper towel and, now unafraid to feel the bug's exoskeleton crush under my fingertips, vanquished the foul beast. The rest of the night I kept feeling phantom bugs crawling on my arms. But that may have been the chemical vapors that seeped into my skin.

Labels: Bugs

written by Ruthie @ 10:04 PM

8 thoughts:

At 5/30/2008 3:13 AM, Anonymous said…

ewww! I hate cockroaches, and I really hope that I never ever see one... ugh... haha, my reaction would be worse than yours.. I wouldn't have the guts to kill it...

thanks for the encouragement to keep cleaning up ^^
At 5/30/2008 4:31 AM, Chris Rensink said…

I just had a cockroach too! Good job in making a good story out of it! Mine was in the bathroom and it tried to hide behind a corner where the wall paper is coming off - I smashed him under there - and then sprayed lots of chemicals on him. :)
At 5/30/2008 2:36 PM, aubrey said…

EW EW EW EW EW

you did much better than I would have. congrats.
At 5/30/2008 11:10 PM, candifer said…

yes, cockroaches gross me out, but i think the word 'crevice' gave me chills.

ew.
At 5/31/2008 11:04 AM, CLU said…

Do you remember when we moved to Brewton and you wouldn't sleep for a week because you thought you heard cockroaches scratching around under your bed? I'm awfy proud that you didn't curl up in a fetal ball and cry yourself to sleep again! ^_^
I really didn't want to bring all that back by pointing out that leaving those food scraps in the sink lure cockroaches. I really didn't. But I am now.
At 5/31/2008 8:01 PM, Ruthie said…

Yeah, I realized that. I decided to move the net of scraps into the trash immediately after doing the dishes, which is probably what I should have been doing all along.
At 6/02/2008 10:56 PM, Tracey said…

Cockroaches are disgusting the world over, my friend. Even in Mississippi. Blah.
At 6/05/2008 3:31 PM, Anonymous said…

when I was a kid, my room was in the basement. Every so often, crickets would wake me up by deciding to crawl across my face. Funny thing now is that a cricket will gross me out way more than cockroaches do when I see them.