I don’t know why cockroaches are so much more disgusting than pretty much any other insect, but they are. In case you’re not anywhere near Texas at the moment, we’re on day 47 or something ridiculous of rain - lakes are twenty feet above where they’re supposed to be, there’s flooding all over the place, and it’s just like a freaking jungle everywhere. Part of jungle life is bugs. We’ve been getting more than our share of six-legged visitors, most of whom are let be, but those greasy roaches are dealt with harshly. They are enemy combatants, and the Geneva Conventions do not apply.
This evening, Bernie went out to the local 24-hour Mexican bakery to get some (ultimately inedible) pastries for dessert, and I was on baby watch. Of course, a minute after she left, Paidia woke up and started babbling away. I went in and laid on the bed to keep her company until she settled down, but quickly realized that was unnecessary, as I saw that one of the little creepy brown dudes was already hanging out in the dark on the sheet, there. I slowly extracted myself and the monkey from the bed, in hopes of reaching our roach extraction kit before he skittered away, but he made it to the corner of the bed, and then behind, before I could get him. When Bernie got home, she declared an all-out offensive, donning boots and gloves and arming herself with bottles of spray bleach and needle-nosed pliers, and after a rousing chase, the intruder was safely captured and sent to the gulag to await sentencing.
Shortly thereafter, as the girls were drifting off to sleep, and I was settling in for a bit of catch-up work, I heard something skittering, then buzzing, under or next to my desk. I got out my pokin’ stick and tried to rustle whatever it was out, when it JUMPED! Well, it wasn’t a crazy jumping roach, but a cricket trying to get out of its last round of moult, and it wasn’t in any position to be captured back in the cords and wires and whatnot back there, so I just let it be, and I imagine that it eventually just hopped away. I don’t know why that didn’t gross me out as much as a roach on the bed - objectively, crickets are pretty freaky-looking, maybe moreso than your average cockroach - but there you go. I think there’s some cultural understanding that crickets are “cute” or something, and therefore less smash-worthy than other bugs.
In other news, my new favorite word is “leptoglossus“. Those little monsters are pretty rad, and they’re everywhere around here. Gonna have myself a little lepto-party, yee-haw.
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