Bugacide

Here in Texas a few things are a fact of life. You can’t go an entire year without a hurricane, a heat wave, or the inevitable arrival of legions of household pests. They come in the form of ants, fleas, ticks, and the hideous water bugs. What is a water bug you ask? That is the nice word that my landlord uses for cockroaches. I call and say, I saw a cockroach in my house and she responds, water bugs are really common this time of year. A rose by any other name is still a big, ugly cockroach.

This year, like the inevitable arrival of the summer solstice, the “water bug” arrived. He was HUGE. He was either the Arnold Schwarzenegger of his kind or he has found a source of toxic waste that he was spending most of his days swimming in.

I first spotted him on Sunday. I was in the guest bedroom putting away games from that night’s funtivities. As I set the boxes on the closet shelf, I saw a scurry out of the corner of my eye. When I turned my head and looked at the beast full on, I got that shot of heat that ran through my body. I know that it is adrenaline, that it is a relic of my ancestors that needed such fail-safes that were built in to run from bears and mountain lions, but why do I get this response over a bug. Logically there is no innate reason for me to have a flight / fight response over something I out weigh by 300%. Logic be dammed, I was scared of the gargantuan insect that was now cohabitating with me. It was too late to call anyone to help me slaughter the thing, so I skirted out to get a shoe.

I returned with my instrument of death and was ready to bring the pain. The bugger must have sensed my murderous intent, for he was now nowhere to be found. I did a cursory look and decided that I had better things to do at 2 am than hunt down my great, white cockroach. In my brilliant thought process, I shut the door to the guest bedroom and went to bed.

Monday night, I got home from the gym, went upstairs, and started to undress. I only had my pants off when I looked up and saw him on the wall above my luggage. I can’t be sure, but I think he might have grown another inch overnight. After being denied the joy of the kill last night, I went to the closet and was again wielding a shoe. Being above the window, I had to climb up on my hope chest to get close enough to deliver my lethal blow. Now, I want you to get this picture in your head. I am half-dressed, balanced on the hope chest, one hand on the ceiling, shoe cocked back in the other. I am convinced the dog was sniggering under his breath. I pulled back the shoe and brought it down on him. His size should have been the first clue that his genetic mutations would make him no ordinary bug. I hit that bug square on and it bounced off his indestructible exoskeleton and now he was mad! The thing jump / flew at me. Screaming, I made my own leap over to the bed. Completely freaked out by the extraordinary resilience of this freak of nature, I just got under the covers. With nothing left to do, I went to sleep. The whole night I was dogged by the feeling that the bug was going to extract his revenge in the night and took special care to make sure I had no exposed flesh for him to snack upon.

Tuesday night I had forgotten about the previous night’s battle royale and went upstairs to go to bed. Laying down, I spotted my nemesis, directly above my bed. Jumping up, I cursed my luck that our showdowns only occurred after the rest of the world has gone to bed. His habit of midnight stalking is how you can tell he was a minion of the devil. I contemplated the logistic of killing a gunk filled bug above my bed and decided I must move the bug to a secondary location to commit my bugacide. I pulled comforter over the bed and hatched a plan. I am going to throw a shoe at the ceiling and the vibrations would scare it to moving to a more appropriate location. The vibration part of the idea worked great, the location part did not. After 15 min of moving the bug around the ceiling like some sort of bad video game, he finally moved to the corner. Success! I moved in for the kill. I hit him and he falls / scurries straight down … right into the dog bed. The dog bolts out of the bed with his tail between his legs, looking back confused at how bugs were raining down on him as he is trying to sleep. Serves you right for laughing at me last night. Shoe, shoe, shoe, and the thing still crawled away and is now under the bed somewhere. I then had to spend another night scared that I would wake up with cockroach eggs laid in my ear.

This morning, I get up to take a bath. I started the bath and when I turned around, there that jerk was! He is the bug that won’t die. He is like the bad guy in a movie. The good news is that he was in the process of dying. I must have hit him good last night or else someone finally pierced him with a silver bullet while I slept. He is about six feet from the toilet, where I can get rid of him forever. I cursed under my breath that I had no man in the house to trick into this task. I contemplated toilet paper, but imagined his guts squirting out and getting on my hands. The disgust with this plan lead me to settle on using a washcloth. I got the washcloth, picked him up, and shook it over the toilet. Toilet empty, no bug; I start to freak out. Did I drop him and he is now crawling up my leg? Nope, worst. I turn the washcloth over and there he is! He has enough strength left to hold on to cloth and is now crawling up the cloth to surely attack me for my cruelty. Not knowing what else to do to stem the assult, I threw the washcloth in the bathtub, cockroach and all. Now I am standing, looking down at the mystical thing die, wondering if I should call the Enquirer or not. Finally I got up the gumption, scooped him up in the cloth and at least a gallon of water in the process and got him in the toilet.

Flushed down, done gone. Nope! After I drained the bath, refilled it and got done with my bath, he was in the bowl. He was doing this sad side stroke thing where he made pathetic little circles. I flushed again, and saw him, with my own eyes, go down. I hope this is the end of the Yeti sized bug and I do not wake up tomorrow with him again hanging out on my wall. Jerk.