The roaches may one day have their vengeance…

Photo by Michael Cote’ via Flickr

What’s with roaches, anyway?

I came out into the kitchen yesterday morning to find one on its back on the floor. Its legs were moving just a bit and that made me much more cautious than usual. Of course, the mere fact that it was in the middle of the floor and not in some obscure corner covered in dust put me on edge.

Roaches have this uncanny way of playing dead and waiting for unsuspecting Diannas to come around and try to sweep them into a dustpan. As soon as the broom touches them, they bounce themselves back onto their creepy little legs and start running. Ugh. I’m shivering just writing about it. My hands are weak, my fingers shaky. I hate roaches.

If they scurry off toward the wall, you know they have a lot of life left in them. You have to smack them with something a few times to do them in. Or drown them in bug spray. But if they run around in circles, it’s usually just a matter of sweeping them back onto their backs. At which point they spin around with their awful legs twitching wildly.

I never pick up roaches with a paper towel, like my husband does. That’s the most disgusting thing ever. I did it once, many years ago, and I could feel its horrid little legs wriggling against the towel. It was traumatizing.

I sweep them up and put them in the trash. And then I spend the rest of the day worrying that they’ve managed to climb out. I wouldn’t mind so much if they climbed out and went away. But the thought that I might try to change out the bag and end up with a roach on me is too much to bear.

If I find the roach in the bathroom, I sweep it up and dump it into the toilet. I have to flush it immediately. There’s no way I’m sitting my bottom onto that seat when there’s a roach swimming around below. I don’t know how it could manage to climb out and get onto my bum, but I have little doubt it could if it was so inclined.

And don’t let them fool you by floating around like they’re dead. The only certainly dead roach is the one that’s so squashed its pus-yellow insides are smashed out. All others should be considered active, creepy legged, and dangerous.

Do they ever die?

The one I found in the kitchen was an American Roach. Freaky creature with large wings. The experts say they prefer not to fly, but we don’t believe them. We’ve run screaming from the room when one of them started dive bombing. And trust me, I know from experience, those freakish spiny legs feel just like they look when one of these gross bugs decides to land on you.

In the bath tub this morning was a half-dead Florida Woods Roach. Half dead. He was the type who turned over and limped in a circle before I swept him up and into the toilet. He’s into the sewer system now…but is he dead?

Can you drown a roach? The Mythbusters say no. “They’re like little zombies.” But they used German cockroaches in their experiment, not the typical Florida Palmetto bug. We can only hope the chemicals at the water treatment plant do the final job.

Then again, maybe not. Apparently roaches might even survive the nuclear holocaust. Which just goes to prove my point. Just because you water them down with Raid and toss them in the trash or toilet does not, by any stretch of your morbid imagination, mean that they are dead. They’re not.

So, it’s possible that all the roaches I’ve tossed into the trash, dazed and confused, could be gathered at a meeting at the landfill right now. Sentries could be exchanging messages with the group stationed just outside the sewage treatment plant. They could be communicating with the roaches I’ve swept, stiff and paralyzed, out the front door and down the driveway, who’ve rallied at the large oak out front. All planning, strategizing, waiting for their moment to invade and take their vengeance.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

This post has made me nauseated. And no, I’m sure it has nothing to do with the insecticide with which my husband is, at this very moment, hosing down the house.