home alone

There are definitely pros and cons to living in beautiful, sunny Arizona in a house instead of second story apartment.  Two nights ago, I was faced with one of those cons.  The night before this incident, the three of us at El Casa Trio had trouble sleeping.  Paige had seen a cockroach scurry underneath the fridge, so we knew that there was something lurking in our home that wasn’t welcome.  

The following evening, Brooke and Paige left for work at 6pm.  At 7:15, I decided to take a shower.  It seemed like a relaxing thing to do, and I really needed one so it was nice.  I shampooed my hair, and just as I turned around to put my face underneath the water for refreshment, I saw a cockroach staring at me, its little antennae motioning around in curiosity and intrigue.  I’m not afraid of cockroaches, but I definitely screamed since I was staring at one in the little eyes in my shower.  Showers are usually a place of vulnerability (like you know if you’ve seen Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock).  Anyways, shampoo in my hair, I jumped out of the shower and quickly wrapped a towel around me, still freaked out that the cockroach might jump on me and get on my vulnerable, bare body.  I ran to the kitchen to grab a cup so I could catch the cockroach.  Yeah right.  I turned of the water softly so that the cockroach wouldn’t scurry away and then stood on the edge of the bath tub and slammed the cup over the cockroach.  Nope!  The little thing ran so fast I didn’t even see its stupid legs move.  Now it was behind my shampoo.  So I pushed the shampoo hoping that the cockroach would run up the wall.  Nope.  It flew!!  It flew down to the bathroom floor so I ran out of there as fast as I could.

I went into my room and put on the tightest pair of shorts I could find so it wouldn’t crawl in my pants.  The cockroach was now in the middle of the hallway against the wall.  I snuck into Brooke’s room where the computer was and looked up ways to kill/catch a cockroach since the cup technique was obviously not working.  I sat right in front of the cockroach with my computer so I could easily see if it tried to run away. Luckily, it stayed in the same place which made it easy for me.  But I knew it was tricky, so I kept my eye on it all night.  All of the articles online only talked about setting up a trap, but no article talked about what to do if you had a cockroach that was sitting patiently ready-to-be-caught.  

I decided to call my mom because she just happens to be a pro at household tasks.  She and I went over our killing tactics and pretty soon it was time to do it.  I set up a semi-circle duct tape trap around the cockroach on the floor with another semi-circle of duct tape on the wall above the coackroach.  Apparently, cockroaches don’t like the smell of duct tape, and they get stuck in the tape.  We also figured out that they hate boiling tap water, so I boiled up some tap water and put it in a big cup.  Next, I put a boot on my right foot and had the other boot grasped in my right hand.  I bravely went over to the gross little creature and poured the scorching water over it.  It ran towards the duct tape and then flipped on its back with its little legs flailing, trying to run away.  At this point, I smashed it as hard as I could with my boot.  It was finally done!!  I was on the phone with my mom for 45 minutes (which included the time that we were planning our kill, the time of the kill, and the clean-up).  

For someone who isn’t afraid of roaches, this little booger freaked me out.  I must have forgotten to breath because my heart was beating so fast and I felt light headed after the whole ordeal.  It’s finally over and we have an exterminator coming soon, so we can all sleep soundly.  I’m just glad that now I know what to do if this ever happens again.  Hopefully if it ever does again, I won’t be home alone.