Roach

Because campus life is all about growing up, and one of the things you're expected to do is kill a freaking cockroach.


I'm living with two girls this semester and they're both afraid of roaches. Well, that makes three of us, because I don't fancy roaches too. We assumed that we wouldn't have any roach problems because we keep our apartment clean and tidy.

Apparently, roaches spawn from a magic hole and just show up in the house when you least expect them to. Earlier today, I was sitting in the kitchen, eating ice cream and revising my homework when I noticed a small dark object scurrying across the living room. I stared at it, transfixed, unsure whether I should yell for my roommates to get downstairs with weapons of mass destruction or just... watch and wait. Well, the dang thing hid beneath the sofa and I had no choice but to inform my roomies.

"There's a cockroach downstairs and if we don't kill it now, it'll grow bigger and stronger and have babies and will take over our apartment!"

That was the right call to action because we started comtemplating various strategies to kill it:

A) Drop the killer-boot (Mary's single big brown boot that I used to kill the spider with) on the cockroach

and if it didn't work,

B) Whack it with a rolled-up newspaper

So we had our options. Next, we spent a while deciding on who should execute Plans A and B. Everyone had excuses.

Dana: Cockroaches are my PHOBIA. I'm super terrified of them!
Mary: Well. I'm really scared of cockroaches. Like, really scared...

They looked at me.

Me: Uh, I'm scared of them too.

So they thought I should do it, since on a "How Afraid Are You?" scale of 1-10, I'm was on the lower end of it. I hate roaches and the sight of them, but that wasn't convincing enough to eliminate myself from the task. Plus, since I killed the spider several weeks back, they assumed I'd be OK killing a roach.

WRONG.

The difference between spiders and roaches is spiders don't fly.

But anyway, I dropped the boot on the roach. Horrifyingly, it survived.

So Dana took a rolled-up newspaper and tried to whack it. I think she did, but it still survived. It scurried awkwardly away from the living room and into the bathroom and stayed between the hinges of the door.

"Shut the door! Maybe it'll smash it."
"Can't, it's moving away."
"OMG it's there! Whack it again!"

*WHACK*

"Where is it?"
"I don't know."

I stared at Dana's rolled-up newspaper, which was just inches away, and suddenly caught a glimpse of something brown stuck between the folds of the paper.

I screamed and fled the living room and dodged past Mary, who was waiting eagerly on the stairs because she um, didn't have a weapon.

Dana screamed too. She dropped the newspaper on the floor and then she spotted the roach. It was still in the bathroom and this time, it was trying to crawl into the wall.

Seconds after my unplanned outburst, I came downstairs again.

"What's it trying to do?"
"I think it's trying to get inside the wall."
"I'd like to see it try. There's no way it can fit into the wall."

The roach proved me wrong. It actually crawled into the small crack beneath the door frame. In other words, it went into the door frame. And it wouldn't come out. We couldn't see it anymore.

That's the worst part, knowing the monster's still breathing somewhere in the house but not knowing when it'll rear it's ugly head again.

So, our mission failed. I'm so embarrassed. But hey, if this ever happens again (which I pray it won't), we'll be fully prepared. We're adding insecticide to our shopping list. I'm sure that'll make a lot of difference.

It has to.