Crossing the line

Houses are for people.  The wild outdoors is for bugs.  Some bugs, while viewed in their natural setting, are pretty cool.  Take for instance, the preying mantis I saw last week OUTSIDE.  Or even the giant yellow-black spiders that build giant webs - also OUTSIDE, which are cool so long as they aren't in my way.

Then there's the gray area ... bugs belong outside, but if certain ones accidentally venture inside, I don't get particularly upset about it.  Mini gnats for example.  I think they actually come through the window screen.  But what's a gnat or two - it's minding it's own business, so I leave it be.

Other than that, I generally feel that bugs intruding inside should be escorted back outside.  This goes for spiders, moths, what have you.  It even goes for mosquitoes if they're near an entry/exit point and can be swooshed outside.  Although, if they insist on hovering & whining in my ear, not to mention sucking my blood, I can be brought to squish them without much remorse.  Without any remorse if said squished mosquito leaves a big red splat of MY blood behind.

But there is a line.  A definite, thick, dark, black, unmistakable line with no gray area whatsoever surrounding it.  Cockroaches do NOT belong inside.  Crossing this line is an instant death sentence.  No questions asked, no reprieve given.  No attempts to shepherd them out the door.

However, I've been lucky.  Well, that and I've been keeping an immaculate kitchen.  I've been here two months without a single invasion.  Which, given the hot & humid nature of the climate here, is quite unusual.  Generally, no matter how meticulous one is, cockroaches are around.  I was feeling a little smug actually.

Until I came home this evening, flipped on the light, and found a giant specimen just sitting there, acting like he was king of the house.

Ohhhhhhh, no. No-No-No-NO!  This will not do!

But what to do? It's way too big to smash - even assuming it doesn't skitter & scurry away under something - it would gunk up my shoe something terrible.

And I don't have any anti-cockroach materials on hand, because I haven't had any incursions thus far.  So I quietly went back out and knocked on the landlady's door.  And confessed...I've got a cockroach in my room.  Does she have anything I can use to exterminate it?

She was awesome!  She asked did I really only have one?  Hadn't I seen any others?  Because they're totally common around here.  And she gave me a spray can for zapping them.  And a handful of her homemade lauric acid nuggets (look a bit like wads of used chewing gum, only they're solid) and told me to scatter these around - apparently the critters nibble on them, and that's the end for them!

So I stealthily reentered my room, AND ZAPPED THE COCKROACH.  Here it is, in executed form.  Doesn't look as big as when it was alive.  But it was, I promise!  Big and yucky.  Now dead & yucky.  And also dead & gone - I picked it up in a tissue and flushed it down the toilet.  No surprise resurrections happening in my garbage can!

And my apartment now looks like a chewing gum maniac went through and tossed used gum everywhere.  Even though I doubt there are any others, especially as the season is cooling off and roaches are naturally disappearing.  But better safe than sorry, eh?

And the moral of the story (for cockroaches)?  DON'T CROSS THE LINE.