Cockroaches really do freak me the hell out.
I’m not kidding. In Texas, where everything is bigger, better, colder and faster and whatever other positive comparative you can think of (and yes, I know there’s no such thing as a positive comparative, adjectives can be positive, comparative or superlative but not all three at once… unless you live in Texas, that is) the cockroaches are like super-sized, bionic specimens of the species. With superpowers.
Plus, they fly. I mean it’s not like they don’t already have all of the genetic advantages, they reproduce like crazy – to the tune of between 800 to 30,000 baby roaches per mama a year (shudder), nothing short of a solid whack with a hard-soled shoe can kill them – supposedly not even a nuclear explosion, they can subsist on practically anything, and despite their comparatively small size they manage to strike fear and revulsion in their biggest enemy (i.e. humans), do they really need to fly too?
Tonight I ran into a relatively small specimen for the first time ever since we moved into this house five years ago, you just don’t see that many cockroaches around here, garden beetles, spiders, ants, bees… yes, but not roaches, anyway, this run-in reminded me why I hate them so very, very much.
It was on my nightstand, as soon as I noticed it, it stopped moving and stood perfectly still, occasionally just twitching an antenna – it’s disturbing as hell to me that it knew I was looking at it. I tried to kill it by thumping it with my water glass, it moved at the speed of light just out of my reach and then froze again. It did this repeatedly. This behavior so freaks me out that every failed attempt at killing it sent me closer and closer to waking the sleeping husband with a girlish screech. I literally got goose bumps. I’m so much bigger than a cockroach and yet the fucking thing eluded me for a full five minutes all in an area smaller than a square meter. Until I went and got a flip flop, flicked it on the ground and pounded it into a pulp.
So, in this case size does have the upper hand, but still a teeny cockroach, no larger than a pinkie nail turned me into a nervous wreck before it’s demise and inspired an entire post. Unnerving.
