Читать книгу 8 Bags of Mice - Z.C. Christie - Страница 13

ATTACK OF LA CUCARACHA

Which translated, means attack of the cockroach, but they don’t really attack, they just sort of lay (or is it lie?) in wait. If you move down South, you need to face the fact that a lot of bugs live there, indoors and outdoors. We had bugs up North, but most types of bugs I was accustomed to seeing back home, had startlingly larger cousins down South.

Worms are bigger, moths are huge, and the roaches (called tree roaches in Louisiana) can I have never researched to see if non-Southern roaches fly. I am sure they might, I just don’t care to know, since I discovered Louisiana tree roaches can and do fly. All over.

Like at you, or into your hair. And why they are called tree roaches make no sense, since they are not just in trees, but everywhere.

In your closet, as you reach for that pair of shoes… under the kitchen sink, as you reach for the can of cleanser… in the bathroom, right at the bottom of the basket you just took that fluffy towel out of… big, long, antennae waving Everywhere Roaches.

They are so big, they don’t even scuttle away at the sight of a human like the occasional Northern roaches I had seen. No, they do things like calmly walk out from under your bed as you are standing by it in your bare feet.

Perhaps you had just woken up, and were staring out the big picture window at the muddy water (we lived on the bayou, which is Louisiana waterfront, but it’s just non-moving muddy water) wondering if that was a snake you just saw slither across the surface of the water, when your peripheral vision detects a slight movement…

You look down to see what it could be…and then your body to safety in the middle of the bed and scream as loudly as you can for Husband to “Husband is a big, tall guy, but he happens to hate roaches, especially roaches. Too bad.

You’re more of a match for it, honey, my heart rate is still over 200, do battle with it. If I try to kill it in my present state, it will probably just laugh and then call all its friends to come on over and party.

I learned to keep a supply of clear plastic drinking glasses handy, that the kids were forbidden to drink from. If Husband was at work, you could recruit one of the teenagers to pop a glass over a roach if you found one. Trap it and then call Husband on the phone to say, “This one is can you get over here and get it out of the house?”

If he couldn’t make it home right away, you then put something heavy on top of the glass, so the roach couldn’t perhaps knock it over and escape, probably on a path right for you. Two big books work well for this. You carefully keep a secure area around the glass until Husband gets home, looks at the Roach Under Glass and announces for the hundredth time he big bugs and why does have to be the one to take it outside?

If you ever move down South with a bug loathing Husband who whines about these things, keep a supply of those cardboard rectangles that come in new shirts and stuff. They’re good for sliding under the glass and trapping the roach in there, so you can then carry it outdoors without ever having to touch it. You then just the entire thing over the deck railing to the lawn below and run back into the house. The lawn guy will eventually bring the glass back and set it on the deck.

In the absence of a Husband, teenaged boy-type-kid or a kindly male neighbor being available to entrap a roach under glass, the solution is simple. You simply go shopping until someone that isn’t you, get home and can then be forced to search/shake/kick everything in the house to try to find the roach you saw sitting there earlier, as plain as day.