August 23rd, 2005
Bug.
I am now going to reveal a carefully guarded secret—-Albuquerque has a serious cockroach problem. Actually, I only assume it is a secret, since I myself would have trumpeted this news until folks across the nation associated Albuquerque more with the cockroach than the balloon festival. I imagine the city leaders meeting in a smoky darkened back room, plotting how to keep the word from spreading, fearing that if it got out, confirmed bugphobes such as myself would never move here.* And, I have to say, they’d be damn well right. If I knew that going into my own kitchen after dark ran me the risk of encountering an antennaed beast the size of my thumb, well, nearby girlfriend or no, this city would have seemed much less appealing.
Where I come from, bugs like that in the house are a blemish on one’s character. Their presence suggests slovenly housekeeping. I will be the first to admit that I don’t love to clean and I haven’t been hypervigilant about sweeping up the cat kibble dust and emptying the drain basket every day. In my building in DC, a city which probably is notorious for its vermin, we had an exterminator every two weeks, and though I refused to have my apartment poisoned whenever I got the chance, the spraying in the rest of the building seemed to keep the bugs at bay. But I don’t think people here think of roaches the same way we do in the East. The local attitude about the roaches is fairly nonchalant—“Oh, yeah, they’re pretty big, aren’t they?” “They’re not anywhere else in the state, just Albuquerque.” It’s almost a point of blase pride, it seems.
Up until tonight, my coping mechanism of choice has been denial. “I never see them,” I have breezily announced lately when the subject has arisen. And it’s been true-—they’ve limited their visitations to evenings when I had guests who were able to take care of the situation for me as I shrieked and then stood rooted to the spot, drooling.** I also have a fantastic little bug-hunting cat who, despite my lover’s assertions that she’s not the sharpest tool in the shed, has earned my everlasting affection for leaving me sweet bug carcasses.*** Dead bugs I can handle. Broom, dustpan, trash-—problem solved.
But tonight, I went into the kitchen to make myself some tea, and noticed the toast crumbs on the counter. “Hmm,” said I to myself, “that’s perfect bug fodder. Better wipe that up.” And as I moved a pan in the sink to grab for the sponge, alien spawn leapt up at me. Huge! Brown! Antennae! Big bendy legs! Aargh! Too late. Project aborted-—lights out-—kitchen abandoned (by humans anyway) for the evening. I only wish the residual post-sighting jump-and-itch syndrome could be banished so easily. It’s strange how a critter that isn’t going to DO anything to me can evoke such a primal base kind of fear. It’s not as if they bite, or are poisonous, like most of the rest of the flora and fauna here. But for hours after I see one, I’m leaping into the air at the sight of clumps of cat hair fluttering in the fan breeze, or knots in the hardwood floor. Which aren’t even moving, I might add.
Problem is, if denial stops working for me, I’m not sure what to do next. I’m not using poison, and just imagining the size of the entrail-smear should I whack the things with a rolled-up newspaper is enough to make me vomit. Buddhist I ain’t—no WAY am I going to attempt to trap it and take it outside. Someone recently told me that prayer works on spiders—yes, she prays to the spiders, telling them to leave her kitchen and bedroom alone or she will be forced to kill them. She sends them mental pictures of her smashing them against the counter, she says. She swears they listen. But I have my doubts. I can’t even get a bead on what psychic wavelength I might use to communicate with the varmints; they just seem so damned, well, alien.
The only other suggestions I’ve heard are boric acid—-the environmental safety of which I don’t know a lot about—-and Dr Bronner’s soap, which this site claims will repel roaches. I guess I’ll have to try it and let you know. At any rate, I’m grateful the blogosphere gives me the comfort that I am not alone in my entomological tribulations.
*Though if this were true, you might think they would remove the Cockroach Notification Form from the home page of the city website.
**Except for that one night when I did the cockroach dance on the front steps after uncovering two of the beasts by picking up a paint roller pan I left out there to dry. But that was outside, which is different.
***And if I had a digital camera, I’d post her picture in loving gratitude, even at the risk of being accused of cat blogging.
