The thing about being from Texas is that even though I grew up in the suburbs, have never shot a gun in my life, and have definitely never killed anything bigger than a bug we all like to imagine ourselves as having a little bit of surly eyed Walker, Texas Ranger round house kicking through our veins. Cockroaches, hell yeah I’ll kill those suckers, just give me a .22 and a machete and I’ll go to town.
Except that I’m only slightly sure of what a .22 actually looks like and I’m pretty sure that swinging machetes at a cockroach, while highly enjoyable, is a slightly inefficient cockroach killing method. My Chuck Norris complex seems to be getting the better of me however, as to date I have killed not one, but three, big nasty cockroaches in the slightly sub par graduate housing I live in.
The first one I killed appeared in my coffee drinking buddy’s room. She knocked on my door late at night freaking out because of this giant roach she saw crawling on the wall next to her bed. It was big, but between our screams and me chasing it with my flip flop and a bottle of Clorox we borrowed from another girl I couldn’t help but wryly interject, “They get bigger.” We managed to eventually kill that one by turning off the lights and exiting the room for a few minutes. The darkness and lack of three high pitched shrieking females no doubt lured the nasty little monster into the open. Crawling back in bed that night after a successful kill I couldn’t help but chuckle about all the freaking out we did over a silly little thing like a cockroach. I mean seriously, everything’s bigger in Texas, even the cockroaches… Right?
Fast forward a few days and Coffee Drinker and I are killing another cockroach that one of my suite mates managed to trap in the bathroom underneath a plastic cup and a Denny’s drink. She left a little note explaining that she couldn’t bring herself to kill it, just to catch it. I have no such qualms. I can handle this. I am from the great state of rattlesnake cowboy boots and five alarm chili. I can kill a cockroach even if I am beginning to wonder if they really do make them bigger in Texas after all. I am going to kill this monster because there is no little sister or man around to do it for me and I can’t take a shower knowing its out there scratching at the cup like an alien in someone’s stomach trying to get out.
What finally did it for me was learning that not only was our building infested with these suckers, unlike the South where cockroaches are endemic and you end up seeing a few a year, up here in the great state of Ohio cockroaches are not something you just have to live with. Apparently they are something that happens in old buildings but that can be eradicated. Key word here: eradicated, as in dead, as in toast, as in sayanora suckers, as in Chuck Norris is about to kick your butt. After that lovely little revelation I went to Target, not once, but twice, and stocked up with bottles of roach killing Raid and giant bait traps. I’ve sprayed my room, the bathroom, the hallways and the common area and managed to put out sixteen baits, eight of which alone are in my room. I also gave one of my bottles of bug spray to the guys at the other end of the hallway so that they can kill the monsters too. I am armed and dangerous and those little monsters better watch out, there’s a new sheriff in town and she means business.
~Have Coffee Will Travel
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