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viewsA Moral Dilemma
By sarahthequeen05, Sunday, May 9, 2010, 4 commentsOk, so I just posted on facebook that I’m cleaning, but at the moment, I clearly am not. I am writing. This is not going to be one of those blogs where you feel better after you read it, or at least feel like you learned something. I’m not feeling very educational at the moment, or magnanimous. Mostly, I’m still freaked out by the cockroach experience this morning.
Yes, cockroach.
I know that you’re thinking that I shouldn’t be surprised, after having lived in Florida for nearly 4 years, and it being summer and all that. (When it’s over 90 degrees, it’s summer- I don’t care what month it is, ok?)
So, I woke up at 0700 and lazed around in bed this morning until about 0730, at which time my bladder forced me to get up. I stumbled the 2 steps from my bed to my toilet (I have a TINY apartment), and peed. I was just finishing when a roach ran from my bedroom into my bathroom and straight toward my foot.
I would like to lie at this point and tell you that I handled it in a calm manner- poised, even.
But that would be cheating you out of the vision of me simultaneously screaming and somehow levitating from the toilet to crouching on the side of the bathtub. Thinking back on it now, I have no idea how I did it. The tub is perpendicular to the toilet, so I leapt like 2 feet up in the air and turned 90 degrees to my left in one move. For someone who has as much grace as a hippo on rollerblades, this was impressive.
It even impressed the hell out of the roach, apparently, because he stopped to look at me, and I swear if he had a brow, it would have been furrowed. I can’t tell you exactly what happened next, because it was such a loud string of profanities that lasted such a long time that my mother might have some sort of cardiac infarction. This being Mother’s Day, that does not seem fair. (But I will have you know that the phrase “You Prehistoric F*****” was said so much that it was eventually shorted to “YPF”.
So there I was, stuck half-naked on the side of my bathtub with a 2 ½ -inch cockroach scurrying around on my bathroom floor, and no bug spray. You might be asking yourself “why didn’t she just smack it with a heavy object?” It’s a good question. The only answer that I have is that I can’t stand smacking roaches. Other bugs, no problem. But cockroaches? EW.
I can’t stand the crunch of their exoskeleton. It reminds me of that phrase from Jack and the Beanstalk where the giant repeatedly tells Jack that he’ll “grind your bones to make my bread”. Apparently, at some point in my childhood, I vowed never to be as gruesome as the giant. Maybe. Ugh. I have no idea, but I can’t stand the sound.
I scanned the myriad of bottles and jars and vials on the counter. Nothing useful. I was hoping for some hairspray, which is hilarious, because I don’t use it. The only thing that I had that sprayed at all was my environmentally-friendly peppermint and eucalyptus bathtub cleaner. I didn’t even know if it would work, only that I was desperate enough to try.
I sprayed the daylights out of that cockroach. Since he wasn’t very smart, he tried to run up the side of the tub into the spray (maybe because he liked the smell of peppermint?), and flipped over onto his back, legs furiously kicking. I continued to spray.
It was merciless and horrible.
Even after he was dead, I wouldn’t set foot on the floor. I stepped from the tub to the toilet seat and then hopped over the door threshold into my bedroom and then onto my bed. I was shaking. Stupid adrenaline. I needed to tell someone, so I called my sister.
It rang and rang and I willed her to answer but she did not. So I called back.
“Hey, Kat, what are you doing?”
“Sleeping.”
“Oh. Crap. Um, I just had a really scary encounter with a really big cockroach and I’m pretty shaken up and had to call and tell someone about it.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, thanks, I’ll let you go back to sleep now.”
I needed a plan for the next time this happened. I threw on clothes, being careful not to look in the bathroom floor, where the roach corpse was, drenched in peppermint essential oil cleaner. Gross. I couldn’t figure out a way to pick him up and put him in the toilet and flush him without having to touch him.
So, I left him there, like how law men used to keep hanged bodies hanging from trees as a warning to other wrong-doers.
And then I went to Target, because it was now 0800, and it was open, and I was still shaking and so that meant that Starbucks was probably in order. I had a soy-strawberry frappuccino, and it was perfect. I was also talking to my best friend, who was only slightly more comforting than my sister regarding the whole incident.
Target was also perfect, and cheery and bright, and I felt better right away. Especially after I got roach spray and wasp spray (because I had a wasp in my bathroom this past Tuesday afternoon), and ant traps and roach traps. I envisioned myself returning from Target and walking in on an entire cockroach funerary procession, complete with jazz band and black umbrellas. And they would all look up at me in terror as I wielded my two cans of bug spray, like a Terminatrix for bugs.
Except it was really low key. I just came back and dusted and cleaned did laundry and am still cleaning and setting out roach traps. Just trying to avoid the moral dilemma that set in, wherein I wondered if there were any detrimental karmic effects to killing something on a Sunday. And that’s where we are now.
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4 Comments
disgusting vermin
Honey, you need to keep a little can of Aqua Net tucked back for times such as these ... and a little herb for your nerves ... or some single malt scotch. One jigger for the roach ... two jiggers for you.
Love ya.
mama
I am so glad you're writing
I am so glad you're writing again!
I was ROLLING reading about your leap from toilet to tub - I can picture myself doing the same thing in the case of a big spider. Kept smiling all the way to the end (BTW where do you get that peppermint eucalyptus cleaner?) and then read your mom's comment.
I <3 your mom too!
Ok, so my peppermint
Ok, so my peppermint eucalyptus cleaner is the Method brand that's sold at Target (and I've also seen it at Wal-Mart and Publix and Sweet Bay grocery stores). They have all kinds of environmentally-friendly household cleaners that I started using when I had cancer because they didn't make me sneeze or make my hands itch and turn red. The pink grapefruit kitchen counter spray is awesome, too. They also have great soy candles scented only with essential oils (as opposed to artificial fragrances), and great laundry detergent. I love pretty much everything they make.
http://www.methodhome.com/
Thanks! I have their glass
Thanks! I have their glass cleaner already. Most cleaners make my lungs hurt so I try to find chemical-free when I can :)
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