Saturday, June 24, 2006
We Don't Bogart Our Roaches
This column is about a topic dear to the heart of may of us. Maybe it’s because the name was given out during World War II, but I doubt it, but the items in question are called “German.” They’re brown, they have six legs, the dominate the planet, and they’re about the most disgusting forms of life ever invented, save for maybe eels and Neo Nazis. I am referring, of course, to the common brown cockroach. (You thought this was going to be about drugs, didn’t you?)
I know more about these insects than anyone ought to because we were invaded by an army last Spring. At first they were just baby ones, cute little buggers with shiny red bodies to fool us into a sense that they were just some sort of desert beetle or something. But they grew and before you knew it there was one of them in my cereal one morning, and they were crawling around all over the house whenever you least wanted to meet one. We called an exterminator, who came over with more poison than the Kaiser’s army used in World War One, in fact me and the animals had to leave for a few hours while the stuff did it’s magic. But it did work, and it only took a couple of dump trucks to haul away all the dead roaches. Yum yum huh? But we kept getting a few. Only now they were just staggering into the house until they flipped over onto their little German backs and twitched a few times, then laid there and took all day to die. At least they were out of my Cheerios™ brand whole grain oats cereal that helps lower you cholesterol. (Let’s see ‘em complain about that use of their trademark.) But then it was finally time to tackle the landscaping around here, which could only be described as something that used to be a yard with trees now reduced to being a dusty pile of dog stuff interspersed with dead figs. The figs were from the big old fig tree in the back yard. It was obviously starting to fall down and we don’t have any idea what to do with figs in the first place. So, I called a guy to come and cut it down.
He went out with his Swedish chain saw and had at the big old thing, then came running up to the house screaming. Upon close inspection I discovered that he was screaming because the tree was hollow and packed to the gills (and I didn’t even know that trees had gills) with cockroaches. Big ones, little ones, pale white ones (talk about emetics) and they were all looking like they’d like nothing better than to jump into a sandwich. The obvious thing to do was to move to someplace that didn’t have cockroaches, but the moon hasn’t been properly surveyed for sale yet, so instead I got a big old bottle of insecticide with a pump handle and soaked that sucker real good. If you’ve ever seen an anthill overturned you’ll remember the sight of all those ants swarming out, running willy nilly around and looking itchy, right? Well imagine that as the same number of cockroaches and you’ll get a picture of what happens when you spray a large roach colony with insecticide.
You know, I was a boy kid. I like snakes. I don’t mind spiders or ants or scorpions. I can eat snails, octopi, almost anything, but the sight of those roaches boiling out of that tree trunk was as close as I’ve ever come to having a nervous breakdown. You talk about ugly, you don’t know what you’re saying. Horrible doesn’t cover it.
But anyway, after the roaches had a few days to all be nice enough to die the man came back and took out the tree and the stump. But the funny thing is, after that it was time for the monthly visit from the bug people to spray around the house to keep the roaches out. That was two days ago. Since then we’ve had dozens of dead roaches in the house. Hmmm. But, on the bright side, they’re completely outnumbered by a type of locust called a “Mormon cricket.” I knew there was something about that Brigham Young guy I didn’t like . . .
