The Tale of the Unwelcome House Guest

Now, dear friends, gather 'round and I will tell you the tale of my unwanted house guest.  Last year when I lived in Portland, I had some unwelcome roommates of the gray, furry kind (and I don't mean Allee!).  They drove me NUTS and it took me almost two months to get rid of them.  My poor puppy about went crazy, too, especially the night we spotted one in my bedroom.  Needless to say we slept with the lights on and Allee growled and barked the WHOOOOOLE night.

Now that I live in North Carolina, I knew there was a possibility I might see some unwelcome roommates of a...crunchier variety.  Allee plus quarterly spraying by the exterminators have kept them at bay so far.  However, this summer, Allee is on an extended vacation to Doggy Disneyland (aka my parents' house) in Utah, and much to my dismay, these not-so-little little buggers (literally) have figured it out and are taking full advantage of her absence.

To be fair, I've only found a few, and they've all been dead (which means the poison is working like a charm, thank you exterminators!)...until now.

I asked my friend Nick about these little...no, strike that, GIGANTIC creatures, and he told me these are called Wood Roaches.  SICK.  He says this is lucky, because the little ones are German Cockroaches and they come in droves.  Wood Roaches usually just come in one at a time, and he says they come in when it rains.  Ughhhhh.  (If you want to know how disgusting these creatures are, go ahead and google "Wood Roach NC"--for those of you who can't handle bugs, I won't post a photo here.  Ughhhhh.)

All this makes total sense, because it's warmer, so they're coming out, and we've been having these glorious thunderstorms every couple days, so apparently they are trying to get out of the torrential rains these storms bring.  I get it.  Makes them no less disgusting.

Anyway, I was hanging out watching this glorious thunderstorm after class the other day, and when it cleared up, I went into the kitchen to make dinner.  I walked out and immediately I saw it--a huge, disgusting creature checking out the empty box I had put on the floor to take out to the garbage after the rainstorm.  It was then that I made my first mistake and broke the cardinal rule--NEVER LET THE ENEMY OUT OF YOUR SIGHT.  I immediately ran into the living room and slid on my flip-flops...no way was I going to attempt to vanquish this beast barefoot.  I ran back into my kitchen and saw...NOTHING.

I immediately called my mom.  When she answered I said, "You want to know the only thing worse than seeing a gigantic live cockroach on your kitchen floor?  LOSING SAID COCKROACH."  So I stood, half-frozen, talking on the phone to my mom while I surveyed the scene and tried to figure out where this vile creature had escaped to, when suddenly it came out of nowhere, running full speed toward me.

Now, I really make a pretty valiant effort not to swear, and especially not when I'm on the phone with my mom, but when a GIGANTIC COCKROACH COMES CHARGING AT ME ACROSS THE KITCHEN FLOOR, all bets are off.  "*$#&!!!!!!!" I yelled into the phone.  "Oh God, oh God, oh God, there it is!"  I backed up and tried not to panic, then apologized to my mom for swearing.  She calmly said, "WELL, STEP ON IT!!!!!"

Easier said than done, my friends.  First of all, WHY DID NO ONE EVER TELL ME HOW TALL THESE BUGGERS ARE?"  Seriously, not only are they the length of my freaking finger, they have these intensely long legs that make them stand up waaaaaaay taller than you expect off the floor. SICK.  I was not expecting that.  When all you've ever seen are dead ones, their legs are always all folded up and it is very deceiving.  NOT OKAY.

So in the interest of not letting it get away again, I knew my only choice was to step on it, but when this giant thing is charging at you and you only have flip flops on and you are completely losing your mind, IT IS REALLY FREAKING HARD!  Plus, the crunch.  Oh, dear Lord, the crunch.  I just can't even handle it.  So disgusting.  I'm still shuddering.

So I let out a mighty "GAAAAAAAHAHHHHAHAHAHAHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!" AND STEPPED ON THE BLOODY THING.  Welllllllllll...............sort of.  Okay, I'm a complete freaking wuss and I sort of like danced on it while I was jumping around and screaming, but I managed to hit it once and it flipped over on it's back.  VICTORY!!!!............and then it started moving.  "Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh, God, it's not dead!!!!!!  It's twitching!!!  Ahhhhhh!!!"  (Mind you, I was still on the phone with my mom this whole time, who was trying to coach me and also laughing at me.  A lot.  Thanks for the support, yo.  She would have been up on the chair screaming if it were her, so she can play brave all she wants when she's 2,000 miles away.)

I stood there and watched this horrific beast moving around, twitching it's legs and antennas and I literally didn't know what to do.  Because, for real, how does any one expect me to walk past it to get over to the sink where there is RAID in the cabinet below when walking past it means I will have to be closer than four feet away from this hideous beast?  I mean, how do I know that sucker's not going to flip over and charge me again as soon as I get near it?  As I weighed my options and realized the longer I waited the better chance I had of it flipping back over and charging, I gathered up my courage and finally ran, hurdling over it's horrible body, flung open the cabinet, and grabbed the RAID.  Not wanting to turn my back to it, in case it disappeared again, I spun around and pulled the trigger on the can.  I sprayed and sprayed and sprayed and sprayed and sprayed it but it still kept twitching!!!!  These things are like in-freaking-destructible!!!!  Ugggggghhhhhh.  As my mom assured me with that much poison it was only a matter of time, I just stood there, frozen, and watched while it finally expired.  Holy sigh of relief, Batman.  The villain had been defeated.  And the village rejoiced (or maybe just I did).

But wait, there's more!  You'd think that would mean this story would be over and I could move on with my life, right?  Nope, because NOW THERE'S A GIGANTIC DEAD COCKROACH CORPSE ON THE FLOOR TO DEAL WITH.  My friends, please understand, giant dead cockroach is only slightly less horrific than giant live cockroach.  I am not ashamed to tell you that my vacuum lives in my kitchen for occasions such as these, because (I told you I'm a wimp) I honestly can't bear to pick them up, even with tissues or a dustpan or whatever because I CAN'T HANDLE GETTING THAT CLOSE TO THEM.  DON'T JUDGE.  Actually, judge me all you want, because I promise, if you haven't experienced them, you have no idea.  THEY ARE HORRIBLE.

So I hung up the phone with my mom so I could try to deal with it.  But here's the thing...okay, I know was being totally irrational, but I could not 100% convince myself that it was actually 100% dead, so I didn't want to vacuum this one up because I also wasn't 100% sure that if it were faking somehow it couldn't just climb back out of my vacuum.  I KNOW, YOU GUYS.  I TOLD YOU I WAS BEING IRRATIONAL.  But it was SCARY.  Even after I tried to nudge it a little and it didn't twitch anymore, I knew I couldn't handle having it in my house anymore, even just in the vacuum.

I weighed my options again, and I looked over at the giant paper towel roll on the counter.  I unrolled about 5,000 paper towels until I had a nice big wad and walked toward the corpse.  I thought about putting the paper towel wad over it and stepping on it again for good measure, but then my rational brain started coming back a little and realized I was being a little ridiculous.  So I took a big deep breath, wadded up those paper towels in my hand so that the nasty beast would be as far away from my actual hand as possible, and in about one tenth of a second, grabbed the body and threw the whole thing in the box, grabbed the entire box, and sprinted to the dumpster as fast as I could.

And that, my friends, is the story of my first (live) North Carolina cockroach.  NO THANK YOU.

THE END.