Thursday, September 12, 2002

A visit from the bug man

I live in Florida, the cockroach capital of the world, but that doesn't mean that I like them living with me IN MY HOUSE. They stay outside with the gigantic grasshoppers and the lizards, and we are good, but once they enter my house? Ah, hell no.

My husband is our bug master. That means that when I see a roach and then complain, he goes out and gets some spray and uses it around the house. His idea of maintenance is to have a can of Raid for roaches close at hand. We differ there on that subject.

Recently, I stumbled upon one of the disgusting critters as I refilled my nightly water glass. I keep water by my bed. Always have. I wandered through the dark house, opened the refrigerator to fill my glass with cold water, and saw, by the glow of the refrigerator light, a cockroach sitting on the counter next to where I was standing. The spray? Not anywhere close at hand. It was in the garage, and the thought of opening the door into another dark room that houses roaches didn't appeal to me one bit. For days, I avoided the kitchen at night.

Then, not long after getting past that episode, I opened a drawer to get out a cloth, and my daughter informed me a roach was living in there. She then opened the drawer again, and there he was the biggest daddy cockroach ever. And with him was his wife and two children. Four roaches! FOUR! Living in my kitchen drawer. I managed to exterminate them all. A process that took twenty minutes of spraying and smacking and jumping all before getting the kids to school. I informed the husband that if he didn't rid this problem immediately, I was calling in an expert.

Tom: "Yeah. Yeah."

I bought some roach traps, cleaned out all my kitchen cabinets, and sucked up all the roach droppings in my vacuum. I placed the traps in all of my cabinets. I felt better. Until the next night during my water glass fillup. There, I spied another. Seriously? I made Tom get out of bed to get this one and let me tell you, he isn't any more fond of these guys then I am. He's probably more nervous, actually.

The final straw came the following afternoon, where I worked on my computer in the playroom. I saw movement out of the corner of my eye and there, walking up the wall was...you guessed it...another mack daddy cockroach. This thing was the size of my hand, and Darcy and I had to work very hard to kill the sucker. I might have gone a little overboard in my whacking of it.

Me: "I hate you. I hate you. I hate you."

This, of course, has been imitated over and over again in Darcy's play. Sigh.

I called the bug man. When I informed my husband of this, he went right out into the garage and got his spray and sprayed the house. The next night....another roach in my kitchen. Not a bug that was drunkenly stumblingly, but a cockroach doing the jitterbug on my cabinet. I didn't feel a bit guilty at not having canceled the bug man.

Carl arrived the next morning. He was a big strapping hulk of a man who looked like he would squash a cockroach with his bare hands. He and I roamed the house where he took out every drawer and sprayed behind them with three different sprays. He lifted, pulled, and removed cabinetry and sprayed. He spent an hour spraying the hell out of the outside of my house as well as the inside. He did every place but the attic but assured me that he would come back and do the attic if I still saw bugs. He also told me that if I ever saw another roach or bug, I was to call him.

Carl: "I'll do the exterminating, but you're responsible for the funerals." 

Carl had a sense of humor.

It's been three days, and I've not spied an issue. I have not seen ants (which we had in our bathroom as well). I have not seen any insects. Nor a roach.

Have I seen my family?

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