When I opened the rusty-white door to the Frigidaire, what seemed like a thousand watts bashed me in the eyeballs in the late night of a South Alabama summer. Arm over my eyes, I groped around using my keen sense of feel to try to locate a Co-Cola. Squinting only to find that I was holding a catsup bottle, I muttered and stuck my head back in the ancient refrigerator.
That’s when they attacked. There were three of them. Maybe four. And they came in low. Sneaky bastards. They’re always crawling around at night, scavenging and stealing, leaving nasty messes, and scaring small children (not to mention grown men). Of the order “Blattaria,Cucaracharacha,” or the roach.
Now, after having lived in New York, you’d think I’d have a better handle on roaches. After all, in New York, everything is bigger, seedier, nastier, and meaner.
Plus, the roaches carry handguns.
So I’ve got some experience with roach-to-man combat. Having served three tour duties and run over 55 bombing missions on my apartment, I am a ruthless, heartless killer. In my massacres of death, I wouldn’t spare the women and children–even if I could tell them apart from the males.
But that night back in my home state, I’ll admit it, I panicked. There’s nothing worse than being attacked nekkid. You’re defenseless. You never know where that bug may go. Thoughts enter your head like, “Do roaches have teeth?”
I take that back–there is one thing worse–being attacked nekkid by a roach and then seeing them scurry off to hide. When you know a big, hairy, ugly roach is under your bed or creeping around in the bathroom–that’s when the real gravity of the situation sets in.
Your mind reels.
If you’re a veteran roach assassin like me, you may have flashbacks: that time as a Boy Scout when the bug got in the oatmeal and you almost ate it; the accident you had in your dad’s car when a hornet came in through the window and you had to use both hands and feet to fight it off; that exhibit you saw at the museum showing how lobsters and roaches are related . . . it can be pretty bad.
And roaches are smart. They know you won’t stoop to hitting them with your bare hands or feet. That’s why they attack you manbuggybuggo. That’s why there never seems to be a newspaper or shoe handy when we all see a roach.
It is in those moments that you’ll do anything to annihilate the invaders. Your knees are shaking, you’re breathing too fast, and you may be picturing your innocent children or sleeping wife having some BUG crawl over their face. That’s when you’ll mace the stove, rip out the cabinets, chuck the Waterford, smother the bugs with the dining room draperies, or just torch the kitchen and burn the whole house down if necessary.
Unfortunately, I don’t think homeowners cover roach attacks.
But back to my last battle: I stood there clutching the catsup bottle like a club, watching the intruders scurry about. Then I grabbed a spatula, thinking (in a momentary spasm of rational thought), “I am not going to mess up the cover of Time, no sir!” I managed to get in one good splat with the spatula, but tragically, the remaining buggers went (MORE) on the offensive –they flew at my face. That’s just reality. Why did God do that? Isn’t it bad enough that roaches can crawl up walls, fit into tight spaces no wider than a dime, and have 400 baby buggies at a time? Do they have to fly, too?
So I took up my mother’s favorite tactic–flailing my arms and yelling #@%! #@*!
At my Mom’s house, we only had one roach. It was a civilized sort of bug that only came out when company came over to cocktail parties or formal dinners. The roach liked to socialize.
With one bug to go, I contemplated my options.
Maybe a gang-land-style murder? A drive-by roaching? Dr. Kevorkian? Nahh, those were all too good for the roach–remember, they’d surprised me late at night so they deserved a gruesome death. Then it struck me–the perfect way to get rid of a bug–to be killed with a picture of me. Grabbing a copy of the Star News, I pummeled that sucker with my column and went back to sleep.
—Morgan Murphy