Awhile back, a longtime friend of mine with a very concerned look on her face asked me if I had ever found cockroaches in my house.
“No,” I said, mentally knocking on wood, “but quite a few spiders always seem to find a way to get inside during the winter. And now and then long lines of ants seem to enjoy using my driveway and patio on their way to and from wherever it is they’re going. Oh, and on more than one moonlit night I’ve spotted big old rats strolling along way up high on the electrical wires in my backyard.”
“Yuck!”
“So, why do you ask?”
“Well, our stupid dog found a few cockroaches in one of our back bedrooms a few weeks ago and nothing freaks me out more than cockroaches. Nothing!”
“Why is that?”
“Well, it goes all the way back to when I first got my job at the State of California and one of them got on my open-toed shoe under my work desk. You should have seen that awful looking thing! And it knew I had discovered it, too. It had a really scared look on its face, you know, just like in those Raid commercials.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yeah. It actually froze for a moment, but then it got brave again and began hissing and waving its nasty little antennae back and forth at me. And those ugly things had to be at least two inches long! And the cockroach itself was huge! Plus, it was shiny, with an auburn covered back and gross little hairs all over it. Just looking at it made me want to throw up!”
“So, what did you do?”
“What do you think I did? I screamed!”
“I mean after that.”
“Well, I shook my shoe off of course – which flew halfway across the office — and then I called building security. And what a jerk that guy turned out to be.”
“How so?”
“Well, to begin with, he was so condescending, just like all men are when it comes to women being scared of things.”
“So, what did he say?”
“He had this stupid grin on his face and this big flashlight in his fat little hand and he said, `So, are you the frightened young lady who wants me to kill a little bug for her’?”
“And what did you say?”
“I told him it wasn’t just a little bug, but the biggest &^$%#@ cockroach I had ever seen!”
“So did he find it and kill it for you?”
“No, not right away, because to tell you the truth, I think he was more scared of the darn thing than I was. So, he just played around with his flashlight for awhile, shining it here and there, and when he didn’t see anything right away, he said to just give him a call if it showed up again. But I told him there was no way I was going to return to my desk until he found it and killed it, so he looked a little harder and finally saw it.”
“Are you sure it was the same one? You know, when you find one cockroach, you going to find a whole bunch more.”
“No, it was the same one alright. I’ll never forget that face!”
As our conversation continued, I learned that since discovering cockroaches in her back bedroom, my friend had gone on the internet and spent quite a bit of time learning more about the pest that she hates above all others.
“Did you know that there are thousands of different species of cockroaches?” she asked me. “And that the reason they usually end up in a person’s house is because people leave pet food out and don’t make sure their garbage is in a metal can with a tight lid on it. Plus, once they get inside, they leave these nasty little chemical trails behind in their feces so that all their ugly little buddies will know where to find them.”
“So, did you call an exterminator to get rid of the ones in your house?”
“Of course I did! And I had them spray everything in sight. Especially outside where he said they actually live and breathe. But he also said when it comes to cockroaches there is never any guarantee that they won’t come back. I just don’t want to end up with one of them in my ear.”
“In your ear?”
“That’s right, my ear. There have actually been reports of people that have cockroaches in their houses who when they wake up in the morning have cockroaches in their ears.”
“Wow, I’ve never heard that before.”
“Well, it’s true. I guess cockroaches like warm, moist places, and they will actually go so far down into your ear that the person has to have a special operation just to get them out. Can you imagine that?”
“Well, that definitely wouldn’t be much fun. That’s for sure!”
“Not much fun having a cockroach in your ear! I would die before they ever got me to the hospital.”