Cockroach

It was a big freaking cockroach—I don’t care what they call them in Florida. A palmetto bug is still a cockroach—that hid from Phoenix under the bathroom rug after she chased it from God knows where. The thought of her eating it was too repulsive for me. So I smacked it with the only magazine in the house—Womens’ Health—and then unceremoniously carried the carcass outside. Flashbacks of Micronesia filled my head. I saw my Peace Corps host mom coming to my rescue when I found a roach in my room. Like a fox terrier after a rabbit she hunted the blasted thing down and managed to pick the bug up—ick—and toss it outside. I am sure it eventually returned to my room or went to the outside bathroom to lurk in the shadows while I nervously peed in the middle of the night. Every once in a while they would jump on me…for the fun of it. After sixteen months of living in the jungle and having these things everywhere, I got a little use to them, but never tolerated the ones that crawled into my bed. Once I had one tickle my face with its antenna. Shivers.

When I was in Kona, Hawaii, I’d find cockroaches every once in a while in the condo. There they seemed to run in packs probably escaping the spray of a neighboring condo owner try to eradicate the pests.