space roach

Wrote this yesterday, forgot to post it. Seems kind of weird now after my previous post, but oh well.



Trauma log, 06/19/2013. While up at 3am, I decided to sit out in the living room and play some video games for a few minutes until I was sleepy enough to achieve slumber.

A few nights ago, I'd heard a chewing sound while out in the living room. I thought for sure that I had another rat in the house, so I had placed rat poison in the vents, again, that evening. Surely, the problem would resolve itself.

Last night, I heard it again. I thought that perhaps the rat was trying to dig for water as a result of the poison, or maybe it hadn't eaten the poison and I'd have to drop more of it elsewhere.

I turned on the light to check. As soon as I turned toward the kitchen, I froze. On the stove, atop a baking pan that Lola Lin had baked some lightly breaded fish upon earlier that evening, was a cockroach nearly three inches long. It was perched on the tin foil the fish had been baked on, chewing the crisped grease off of the foil.

This cockroach was chewing so loudly I could hear it halfway across the house.

Thankfully, I had recently purchased a can of Scrubbing Bubbles to compliment the roach bait I've scattered across the house. Florida is not a place where roaches can be avoided, no matter how clean the kitchen (especially in an old mobile home), and I like to be prepared for any encounter.

I hadn't expected to come face to face with an other-worldly beast such as this, but after some initial, um, war cries, and a little battle dance for morale, I sneaked past the beast toward the cabinet. Retrieving my arms, I crept toward the monster, still sucking down succulent fish fry, oblivious to its impending doom due to the sheer rapture of baked grease.

I attacked. It fled, of course, down the side of the stove and onto the floor. But by the time it left the pan, it was already slick with cleaning supplies. When it hit the floor, it landed on its back. I doused it in an enormous foaming mound of death and justice. When the suds cleared, it was still twitching.

I doused it, again.

Finally, the monster drew its final breath. Victorious, I sighed in relief. I buried my foe in the toilet, and saluted his honorable death with a thundering flush.

It took a while to fall asleep.