the little bastards
I have been up since 3:30, awakened by the need for a drink of water and kept awake* by the sight of an ENORMOUS cockroach scurrying up my bathroom wall while I peed -- naked. I think it was the bit about being naked that made the experience a little freakier: greater potential for skin contact with the little bastard.
He's dead. I'm alive. He eventually made it to the wall in the hallway and I sprayed the sh*t out of him with a little toxin-in-a-can and then scalded him with hot water in the shower and sent him down the drain. In the past, I would have screamed, but after living in this apartment for almost two years, I have become accustomed to these things.
I feel the need to tell you that I am an incredibly clean person, a positive side effect of having OCD. The exterminator who came to my place last summer will attest to that. But it is still gross and, yes, a little humiliating for someone who is a neat freak. In fact, my OCD is so bad that I actually keep a list of all the cockroaches I have found, despite not having a clue as to what I intend to do with the information:
6/7/05-dead in bathtub
6/7/05-alive in kitchen cupboard
6/8/05-dead on bathroom floor
6/9/05-dead in bathtub
6/13/05-dead on living room floor
6/13/05-dead on bedroom floor
6/19/05-dead in bathtub
6/26/05-dead on kitchen floor
6/27/05-dead on kitchen floor
7/6/05-alive in kitchen sink
7/23/05-alive on hallway floor
8/8/05-alive on kitchen floor
8/25/05–dead on living room floor
10/4/05-dead on bedroom floor
11/7/05-dead on bedroom floor
3/16/06-alive in living room
3/19/2006-alive in bathtub
4/9/06-dead in bathtub
4/22/06-alive on kitchen floor
4/26/06-dead on bedroom floor
4/27/06-alive on bathroom wall
Any ideas?
*Like Kristen, I can't sleep through anything, which may explain some things.
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3 comments:
"Dead on the Bedroom Floor" is a great name for a mystery novel. It's comforting, anyway, that so many of your roaches *are* showing up dead.
I don't miss those days, and I don't envy you. Totally distressing.
Found another dead one this morning -- under my bed (I was sweeping). It really is distressing, less so because of the bugs themselves and more so because I am hoping that there is some point in my life when I'm just too damn classy to have cockroaches. Isn't that something that happens in the first couple of chapters of the autobiography of the fabulous broad when she tells the tale of her first few years in the city before she became the editor of the fashion magazine?
"I shared an eighth floor walk up on the Lower East side with a community of cockroaches who seemed to be eating better than I was, judging by their girth."
Yuck. I'm so sorry. That really sucks. You need to move to some sort of airtight 21st century high rise. It's the old buildings with character that have all the holes in them.
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