2002-08-15 - 8:42 p.m.

On the internal soundtrack: "Golden Slumbers", Beatles.

One day last week, my mother had just IM'd me when I saw something, out of the corner of my eye, moving around on my desk. I looked over and it was a bigass roach. (Is there any other size, in the city? Argh.)

It was moving rather slowly, one leg at a time, as though it were very old or very weak. Not in a hurry.

I knew I had to kill it.

My blood pressure skyrocketed, I started trembling, and IM'd my mother, "Hang on, there's a roach." I was determined to kill the thing this time, but I was scared.

I grabbed an empty wastebasket and started trying to shoo it into that, but the little fucker skittered underneath a family-heirloom music box I keep on the desk. This was particularly irritating to me. It -- the music box, not the cockroach -- plays "Ave Maria" and was given to my great-grandmother by my grandmother and grand-aunt on December 7, 1945. There's a lock of somebody's straw-yellow hair in it. My great-grandmother documented the date and who gave it to her, but didn't tell us whose hair it is. Could be any one of her grandchildren's. Either way, I DON'T WANT SOME GODDAMN COCKROACH COWERING UNDERNEATH IT.

I cleared the desk, lifted the music box, and tried to shoo the roach into the wastebasket again and it just skittered to the underside of the desk. Apparently it was capable of short bursts of quick movement.

By this time, I was a complete mess, typing, "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" to my mom on IM, who was typing back, "It's just a bug, Evelynne" and "You're bigger than it is." Mother is far, far more pragmatic about roaches than I am. Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever seen her having a panic attack about anything, least of all a big ugly bug. Wherever I got my own anxiety from, it wasn't her.

At this point the damn thing is under the desk crawling around (still slowly) on my work stuff on the floor, and the last thing I needed was roach guts all over my dataset documentations, so I decide to ignore it and hope it went away. Mother was still offering advice via IM -- "Shoo it into a wastebasket" and "Just stomp on it!" -- so I explained the issue with the work stuff, plus the issue of not wanting bug guts all over the rug. So she said, "Shoo it onto a piece of paper and then stomp on it!"

My mother is nothing if not resourceful when it comes to bug-killing.

At this point, I didn't see it anymore, so Mom and I planned a few details about the trip to Montreal. She signed off, and then I turned slightly and saw the damn thing making its way slowly across the rug toward the couch.

So I ran into the hall to get my stompin' shoes, put them on, and grabbed some newspaper. I put it on the floor. I tried to shoo the roach onto it and it went the other way. So I spread out the paper some more, maneuvered the bug between the paper and my desk chair, and finally managed to get the bug onto the paper. It was moving quickly now, so the following happened, in quick succession:

STOMP!

"SHRIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!!!!!!!!!!!" [very, very loud]

[Great gasping sobs of fear and disgust]

[More stomping]

[A wing flies off from the impact of the stomping]

"AAAAAAAA!!"

At this point my heart was RACING and POUNDING, I was nearly crying, and the bug was good and dead. I couldn't stand to look at it, all squashed there and oozing, so I pulled more newspaper over it, since I was not yet ready to throw the bug away.

Then I went to the computer and ordered Poindexter to come home and comfort me.

Then I put my work gloves on, took off my stompin' shoe, and went to the bathroom to scrub roach guts of the bottom of my shoes, gagging all the while.

Poindexter came home, a loooooong 15 minutes later (it was lunchtime), and said, "I came as soon as I heard!" And he squeezed me tight and laughed at me as I tried to relate the story, interspersed with more of those gasping sobs. He was proud of me, though, as I had expected he would be.

In Montreal, Mom wanted to go to the Jardin Botanique to see the plants and flowers. I wanted to go because they had an Insectarium, wherein I hoped to encounter some live cockroaches so that I could perhaps learn to be more comfortable with them while they were behind glass.

No such luck. I got full-body goosebumps looking at the bugs, which made my mom laugh and rub my arms to make them go away.

I left the Jardin before they did, to do conference stuff, and when we met up later, they said they had a surprise for me. They made me close my eyes and hold out my hands, which made me very nervous. "It's not going to wiggle in my hands, is it?" They promised it wouldn't.

Instead, they put a walnut shell in my hand. I shrieked a little. "Something's going to pop out at me!!!!!!!" They laughed, and said it wouldn't, so I opened it carefully.

Inside was a little bug the size of a Mento, painted green with yellow spots, with eight little fuzzy black legs that jiggle madly with the slightest provocation. "AAAAAA! It's wiggling!" I yelled. They laughed some more, and Dad said, "I thought it was cute!" Which it is.

They looked all around the gift shop looking for just the right bug for me, apparently. This one is perfect. Mom said I could keep it on my desk to scare away the roaches. And that's just where he sits right now.

previous index next