Recently one morning, I was standing at my kitchen sink and caught a shadow moving across the floor from the refrigerator to the stove. It quickly disappeared under the stove. I thought it was a mouse and, although I was not happy about the idea, I quickly decided to ignore it since I had to get ready for work and it was already gone from view.
While I went back to setting up my morning coffee, it came back out from under the stove and scurried back behind the refrigerator. This time I was able to see that it was not a mouse but the biggest roach in the history of roaches. It really did look like a small mouse! I grabbed a can of bug spray from under the sink and sprayed under and behind the fridge. I assumed it would die back there and tried once again to put it out of my mind.
However, it came running out again while I was standing at the sink, rinsing dishes. It ran along the floor board and I had to jump back to get out of it’s way. It was moving way too fast to do anything else and, I wasn’t going to let it run over my feet. It went up the wall and into the cabinets before I could even realize what it was doing. It was so large that I could actually hear it's feet moving across the cabinet floor! At this point my heart was racing and I was beginning to panic, but I told myself it would die in there and I could get it later.
After a few minutes of listening to it shuffling around in the cabinet, it came running out again and went across the floor behind the trash can. I pulled back the trash can and saw that it had a white coating on it. This showed me it had gotten a good dose of bug spray earlier, but that didn’t seem to phase it at all. As I tried to spray it again, it jumped from the trash can to the wall and was hanging on by two legs. When the blast of bug spray hit it, it flew at me and I had to jump back while screaming. It ran back to the cabinet and stopped under one of the dog’s chew toys.
I was frozen with fear and could not believe I was having a battle with a cockroach in my own kitchen at 6:40 in the morning. This was obviously not going to be a good day. I had to think of a way to kill this monster. I carefully walked past it to the laundry room and got my broom out. I had to walk back past it again and stood back as far as I could, using the broom stick to reach out and move the dog toy out of the way. As soon as I moved the toy, the roach began trying to get away. I started beating it with the broom but could not kill it. I was hitting it and screaming and it was shuffling around the floor. Parts of my broom started flying off and landing all over the kitchen. I was not sure if the broom was going to outlast the roach in this battle. Eventually, I flipped the roach on it’s back and since it was tired out, it didn’t move.
Throwing the broom to the side, I got a paper towel to throw on the roach so I could smash it. Now my fear was that it would use the paper towel as leverage to turn itself over again, so I also grabbed the largest cookbook I had. Now with one hand on the paper towel and one on the cook book , I readied myself for the next phase in this great battle. I quickly threw the paper towel on the bug while simultaneously smashing down the cookbook. The roach was smashed under the book, but had shifted forward so that part of it’s body and it’s antennas were sticking out and it was still moving!
After grabbing a second paper towel, I quickly removed the book, dropped the second towel to cover it’s head and dropped the book again. This time I stepped on the book for good measure. When I removed the book, the bug was finally dead but smeared in bits all over the floor. I had to clean off my cookbook and the floor, throw the bug in the trash and put the pieces of my broken broom back together. Then I was able to make breakfast, get dressed, get my son ready for school and begin my day.
And all of this before having my morning cup of coffee!!
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