It's actually really unnecessarily long, but let me go ahead and reveal my thesis now, for those of you who like to cut to the chase: Cockroaches are the most disgusting mistake of a creature that the universe has ever spawned. (And here May and my mom both either stop reading or begin composition of a treatise outlining all the charming characteristics of the cockroach and enumerating their countless contributions to society and the animal kingdom. Which I will defiantly ignore.)
This is a simple absolute truth that abides no contention, and yet, mysteriously, it's taken me until last night to attain full clarity on the topic. Let me explain how I got here.
During my first extended stay in the tropics, while teaching English in rural Costa Rica after high school, I lived with a local host family who liked to spend the evenings watching a popular variety show to kill time before their beloved soap opera started. The variety show never failed to be an idiotic waste of time, but it had its highlights. For example, one of the first nights in my new home, I witnessed the following programming: 8 or 9 grown men, dressed up in full body cockroach suits complete with however many hairy legs is appropriate sticking out at all angles and wiry antennae poking up out of their beady little cockroach heads, were dancing around a pool of what could easily have been mistaken for water by the untrained eye. Lucky contestants were chosen to come up to the stage and swing a 6 foot can of Raid, hung from the ceiling by a cable, at these dancing cockroaches with the ultimate goal of knocking them into a pool of -- not water, but Raid in liquid form (it was of course actually water, but we were encouraged to use our imaginations), upon which the cockroaches would wriggle and squirm and shriek until the Raid seeped into their little nooks and crannies and they died a horrible death. Congratulations! A month's supply of Raid to the winner!
I was amused, but also horrified. Was this what I was in for in the tropical paradise nation of Costa Rica? A cockroach problem of such daunting proportions that the local populace had rely on such grotesque humor just to be able to cope? That night I slept with the blankets up around my neck and a pillow over my head, impervious to the bewildered glances from my host sister roommate. She may have thought I was a freak right off the bat, but then I made it all night without having to shake a cockroach out of my ear, so what did I care.
Thankfully, though, it turned out that my initial fears were unfounded. The variety show must have just had a really good relationship with Raid, because in my entire four months of living in a wood and corrugated tin cabin with a leaky roof and very little separation of indoor and outdoor, I can't even remember ever seeing a cockroach. This must have been due in large part to the fastidious cleanliness of my hosts, but I think it also had to do with Goofy, the rat terrier mutt that the family usually kept on a chain outside, who never got as much attention in his whole life as he did during the time I was there, who adored me with all his heart and soul after I pet him for five minutes and snuck him some leftover chicken, and who must have chased them off in order to keep me around. Goofy and I loved each other and I know he would have done that for me.
At any rate, I wrapped up my first tropical foray without much of an opinion on the cockroach either way. Then a few years later I went to Senegal and lived with a 300 pound Wolof host mama who was the first of her husband's two wives, a woman who had learned that she couldn't control much in the world beyond the walls of her house and the ten children who lived within them, but she could sure as hell control that. She was a force to be reckoned with; I pity the cockroach that crossed her path, and its extended family. So I didn't really have a cockroach encounter there either, but I have to attribute that to the badass mamajama making sure her resident tubab had no reason to take her rent money elsewhere. Like Goofy before her, Mama kept the cockroaches out and the cash cow in (even if Goofy's was a different currency).
Fast forward to the present. Here I am in the tropics again -- only this time, I'm on my own. No Goofy to regulate, no Mama to lay down the law. It's me against the cockroaches and no 6 foot can of Raid in sight. And so only now does the full horror of the cockroach really become apparent; only now do I realize what I'm up against.
There are two or three of them living in the kitchen. They come out at night and scurry around, sometimes squeaking, sometimes going about their foul business in silence. This really wouldn't be that much of a problem for me if I could pretend it's not happening, but to get to my bathroom, I have to walk through the kitchen. Sometimes in the dead of night. Alone. In the dark. And barefoot.
Usually, I just deal. I slap my feet loudly against the tile floor on approach, and the cockroaches have the decency to pretend to fear me. They scuttle under the cabinets and hide until I pass. We eye each other warily, but nobody makes a move. I relinquish this territory to them, and they offer me safe passage. We have our boundaries. Nobody gets hurt.
This, at least, is how I understood our fragile coexistence. But last night this delicate balance was rudely upset when, upon returning my midnight trip to the loo, one of these mangy pests refused to cede passage to me, crouching insolently in my path as I tried to leave the kitchen. I foot-slapped. He hissed. I clapped my hands. He hissed. I made a shoo-ing noise. One more hiss. And then, the unthinkable: he LEFT the kitchen, TURNED the corner, and ENTERED MY ROOM. Where he promptly hid under my armoire and hissed at me smugly from the safety of his dark abode.
All rules of interspecial etiquette thus abandoned, I went to look for something deadly to spray at him. Even a 1 foot can of Raid would have sufficed, but of course we didn't have any. All we had was fabric softener, so I tried that. Spray spray! Hiss hiss! Nothing. Then I tried to chase him out with a broomstick shoved blindly under the armoire and flung around in desperate search of a target. Poke poke! Hiss hiss! But still, no movement. I tried to move the armoire, hoping somehow to crush him in the process, but it was too heavy. I had nothing. He was firmly esconced in his hideyhole and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it. I had been outfoxed by a three inch insect, and I was pissed.
Naturally there would be no sleeping under these circumstances, with such a monster so close at hand, so I spent the rest of the night tossing and turning, blanket up to my ears despite the heat, one eye open and ears attuned to the tell tale sound of the cockroach scuttle. I kept thinking of the night not long ago that Charlsea woke up to a cockroach crawling across her arm...oh the horror...Anyway the scuttling sound of escape never came, or maybe I did doze off for a minute or two and he made a break for it, who knows. All I can say is that a war has been declared, my homeland has been invaded, and it is my sacred right to defend myself to the death. There's just no going back. This cockroach and his little cockroach clan are toast.
Trouble is, these buggers are really hard to kill, and I feel like spraying Raid indiscriminately throughout my kitchen is probably kind of a lose-lose situation. So I have to be creative and I'm eagerly accepting suggestions. How to kill the cockroach? Discuss.
This is a simple absolute truth that abides no contention, and yet, mysteriously, it's taken me until last night to attain full clarity on the topic. Let me explain how I got here.
During my first extended stay in the tropics, while teaching English in rural Costa Rica after high school, I lived with a local host family who liked to spend the evenings watching a popular variety show to kill time before their beloved soap opera started. The variety show never failed to be an idiotic waste of time, but it had its highlights. For example, one of the first nights in my new home, I witnessed the following programming: 8 or 9 grown men, dressed up in full body cockroach suits complete with however many hairy legs is appropriate sticking out at all angles and wiry antennae poking up out of their beady little cockroach heads, were dancing around a pool of what could easily have been mistaken for water by the untrained eye. Lucky contestants were chosen to come up to the stage and swing a 6 foot can of Raid, hung from the ceiling by a cable, at these dancing cockroaches with the ultimate goal of knocking them into a pool of -- not water, but Raid in liquid form (it was of course actually water, but we were encouraged to use our imaginations), upon which the cockroaches would wriggle and squirm and shriek until the Raid seeped into their little nooks and crannies and they died a horrible death. Congratulations! A month's supply of Raid to the winner!
I was amused, but also horrified. Was this what I was in for in the tropical paradise nation of Costa Rica? A cockroach problem of such daunting proportions that the local populace had rely on such grotesque humor just to be able to cope? That night I slept with the blankets up around my neck and a pillow over my head, impervious to the bewildered glances from my host sister roommate. She may have thought I was a freak right off the bat, but then I made it all night without having to shake a cockroach out of my ear, so what did I care.
Thankfully, though, it turned out that my initial fears were unfounded. The variety show must have just had a really good relationship with Raid, because in my entire four months of living in a wood and corrugated tin cabin with a leaky roof and very little separation of indoor and outdoor, I can't even remember ever seeing a cockroach. This must have been due in large part to the fastidious cleanliness of my hosts, but I think it also had to do with Goofy, the rat terrier mutt that the family usually kept on a chain outside, who never got as much attention in his whole life as he did during the time I was there, who adored me with all his heart and soul after I pet him for five minutes and snuck him some leftover chicken, and who must have chased them off in order to keep me around. Goofy and I loved each other and I know he would have done that for me.
At any rate, I wrapped up my first tropical foray without much of an opinion on the cockroach either way. Then a few years later I went to Senegal and lived with a 300 pound Wolof host mama who was the first of her husband's two wives, a woman who had learned that she couldn't control much in the world beyond the walls of her house and the ten children who lived within them, but she could sure as hell control that. She was a force to be reckoned with; I pity the cockroach that crossed her path, and its extended family. So I didn't really have a cockroach encounter there either, but I have to attribute that to the badass mamajama making sure her resident tubab had no reason to take her rent money elsewhere. Like Goofy before her, Mama kept the cockroaches out and the cash cow in (even if Goofy's was a different currency).
Fast forward to the present. Here I am in the tropics again -- only this time, I'm on my own. No Goofy to regulate, no Mama to lay down the law. It's me against the cockroaches and no 6 foot can of Raid in sight. And so only now does the full horror of the cockroach really become apparent; only now do I realize what I'm up against.
There are two or three of them living in the kitchen. They come out at night and scurry around, sometimes squeaking, sometimes going about their foul business in silence. This really wouldn't be that much of a problem for me if I could pretend it's not happening, but to get to my bathroom, I have to walk through the kitchen. Sometimes in the dead of night. Alone. In the dark. And barefoot.
Usually, I just deal. I slap my feet loudly against the tile floor on approach, and the cockroaches have the decency to pretend to fear me. They scuttle under the cabinets and hide until I pass. We eye each other warily, but nobody makes a move. I relinquish this territory to them, and they offer me safe passage. We have our boundaries. Nobody gets hurt.
This, at least, is how I understood our fragile coexistence. But last night this delicate balance was rudely upset when, upon returning my midnight trip to the loo, one of these mangy pests refused to cede passage to me, crouching insolently in my path as I tried to leave the kitchen. I foot-slapped. He hissed. I clapped my hands. He hissed. I made a shoo-ing noise. One more hiss. And then, the unthinkable: he LEFT the kitchen, TURNED the corner, and ENTERED MY ROOM. Where he promptly hid under my armoire and hissed at me smugly from the safety of his dark abode.
All rules of interspecial etiquette thus abandoned, I went to look for something deadly to spray at him. Even a 1 foot can of Raid would have sufficed, but of course we didn't have any. All we had was fabric softener, so I tried that. Spray spray! Hiss hiss! Nothing. Then I tried to chase him out with a broomstick shoved blindly under the armoire and flung around in desperate search of a target. Poke poke! Hiss hiss! But still, no movement. I tried to move the armoire, hoping somehow to crush him in the process, but it was too heavy. I had nothing. He was firmly esconced in his hideyhole and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it. I had been outfoxed by a three inch insect, and I was pissed.
Naturally there would be no sleeping under these circumstances, with such a monster so close at hand, so I spent the rest of the night tossing and turning, blanket up to my ears despite the heat, one eye open and ears attuned to the tell tale sound of the cockroach scuttle. I kept thinking of the night not long ago that Charlsea woke up to a cockroach crawling across her arm...oh the horror...Anyway the scuttling sound of escape never came, or maybe I did doze off for a minute or two and he made a break for it, who knows. All I can say is that a war has been declared, my homeland has been invaded, and it is my sacred right to defend myself to the death. There's just no going back. This cockroach and his little cockroach clan are toast.
Trouble is, these buggers are really hard to kill, and I feel like spraying Raid indiscriminately throughout my kitchen is probably kind of a lose-lose situation. So I have to be creative and I'm eagerly accepting suggestions. How to kill the cockroach? Discuss.
oh boy, now i'm even more excited to visit in march!
ReplyDeleteyup. as I read this post, I was thinking about zsaleh sleeping on a FLOOR that will either have cockroaches crossing it or be toxic from Raid. clearly, zsaleh beat me to those thoughts. sorry I don't have any cockroach-destroying wisdom to pass down: guess if you don't grow up in the tropics, you miss out on that. have you asked any of the Cambodians in your office for suggestions?
ReplyDeleteGOOD LUCK! Sue
not to worry! i feel confident that they will all be dead by then by way of an organic homemade trap that i discovered on the internet: stale beer in a plastic jar. apparently they just can't resist. so my house may reek of beer, but that's better than being overrun with cockroaches or poisoned by raid, right?
ReplyDelete