la cucaracha

Maybe I’m not cut out for the tropics. The thought has occurred to me, continues to occur to me every time I’m in my kitchen. It’s hard to have all fronts covered at once; standing at the sink is a poor choice, near, as it is, to their evil lair, and I expect at any point an attack from below. I don’t want to sit at the table to eat, I know they’re also in the living room – seeing as how I have found several dead ones under the couches – and so I eat my salad from the mixing bowl, shoveling it hastily into my mouth while rotating steadily, aware I’m unprotected and preparing for the assault. The sink is where things need to get done – washed, prepared, filled – and is therefore unavoidable, and still I continue to cast a nervous eye on the hole from which they will, sooner or later, emerge. This morning, of course, I’m making tea and buttering my bread or whatnot glancing, as I always do, repeatedly towards the corner, not actually one, but two (two!) live ones crawling over the pandan leaves (which someone told me keeps them away as they ostensibly hate the stuff – lies! All lies!) and onto my otherwise spotless floor. All I can do is hastily grab the bug spray as my only defense, knowing they otherwise have no compunctions in coming for my foot, and wondering how much I will either inhale or accidentally spray on my food. I aim and fire, and it scuttles away towards the corner from whence it came, and I can only grab my tea and beat a hasty retreat. I can’t kill the fuckers, I just can’t step on them – not for lack of wanting them dead – but I just can’t squish anything that large. I’m still grossed out by – but am getting better at nevertheless removing – the dead ones, but the live ones I just can’t do. I’m terrified of my kitchen, I won’t hang out in the living room, and I am tired of (frequently) scraping dead and half-eaten cockroaches from the floor. Again. FML.