Return of the Roaches

"Okay, then. If you call back, and I'm not here, they've either taken the phone, or taken me hostage. (Small squeaky voice) I. Love. You. (almost a whisper) 'Bye."


That is the phone message I left for M this morning at his work. They--GIANT, MEAN-LOOKING cockroaches--have been something I've talked about before. I'm already known as The Lady Who Hates Her Kids, I'd hate to be known as The Cockroach Lady, but I've just got to share. I assume everyone who's ever eaten at my house is now sorry they did, but I promise you, if you live in South Alabama, and you go through your pantry (not the canned goods, but the plastic bagged pasta, flour, sugar) that you will find cockroach pooh. And when you do, you will feel bad for judging me. Mark my words.


So, I found a teeny bit of cockroach pooh in the cupboard where I keep flour, sugars, medicine, the all important coffee, nondairy creamer. I thought, today's a good rainy day for cleaning off a shelf, I will take everything off the shelves in that cupboard, wipe them down with bleach and put everything back. Not too big a job. Just right for a Monday.


Then, I moved my two white porcelain canisters and stumbled on to a cockroach luau. A freakin' cockroach nightclub. Streamers, disco lights, little cockroach bimbos with cigarette trays like in a Sinatra movie. Little cockroach gangsters with white fedoras. It was a effin nightmare. Cockroaches snorting flour like lines of coke. Giving me the stinkeye, like I'm Narc, checking them out. FOUR GIANT COCKROACHES just sitting on the shelf like they own the place. Like I'm crashing their mojo. They are the rockstars, loungin' around, doin' the drugs, pimpin' the chicks, chowin' down on the white carbs, getting high on the brown sugar, munching the nondairy granules like gangstas.


(Me screaming.)


I take M's shoe and start breaking up the joint, like a bad fight bar scene in a movie. Whacking away. Shrieking, whacking, gagging. Over and over. There are bodies. I get down from the kitchen chair and run to the phone. I dial the 911 equivalent of roach infestation: 1-800-TERMINIX. The woman asks how I'm doing today, "not good. I reply. I just busted up a roach rave in my cupboard, and I'd like some one out here ASAP to nuke these mothers."


"Okay. What's your phone number or customer ID?"


"No. Not Okay. Not okay by a longshot. Okay would be hanging streamers and getting a mariachi band for their fiesta. Okay would be whippin' up an apps platter of potato skins and wings. Okay would be NOT HAVING BUGS the SIZE OF RODENTS IN MY CUPBOARD!!!!!!"


"So. Not ok. May I still have your phone number or customer ID?"


The Terminix man is coming tomorrow morning between 8 and 10. Quite frankly, I don't care if he bathes my house, and everyone in it in carcinogens and chemicals. I want those roaches dead more than I've wanted anything in a long long long while.


That being said, I am COMPLETELY revolted by the orgy of Bacchanalian eating and crapping that has been going on in my coffee cupboard. I go back to wipe up the corpses from the whacking, and ANOTHER roach is out on the shelf feeding on one of the dead ones. These things have no freaking soul. I mean, the body's still warm, and so the other one's thinking...'cool. Hot breakfast. This place is way better than Day's Inn.'


Everything is dead. I get bleach, gloves, and paper toweling. I begin the post mortem clean up. Gagging, wretching, trying not to think that I eat food from these very cupboards. I lift up the Splenda container and am satisfied. Even cockroaches know that artificial sweetner will kill you.


Then, I lift up the paper sack of flour. The bottom is completely eaten away. Flour spills everywhere, and with it, a cascade of baby cockroaches.


THAT IS IT.


I squash as many babies as I can find. I am the killer of babies. I am now a Roachicidal maniac. I am stomping, whacking and squishing anything that moves. Or even flutters in the breeze of the air conditioning. I am in a killing frenzy.


I see something in the corner of my eye, and notice there is a Jabba the Hutt roach in the sink. I think of the scene in Return of the Jedi, when Jabba has Leia on the chain. Those disgusting drooling aliens and rats, all gorging on food, and ogling the gladiator fight with the gross slimy thing. I suppose Jabba the Roach here was most recently in my cupboard, relishing the spoils of my baking supplies. Savoring the debased lifestyle of filth. Crapping with total disregard on the lids of my canisters.


Leaving everything, I head to Target. I buy, of course, roach traps. New flour, new sugar, new brown sugar, new anything that goes in a cupboard and $120 worth of BPA-free canisters. I come home, start tossing. If it's open, it's out. Grains, cereals, chips, crackers, any disgusting snack food my kids have on the shelves. Pasta, coffee, everything in a canister. Those effers are going to break an antenna trying to get into the vacuum sealed armor I bought. Tomorrow, the guy is going to come, and kill the relatives of the sleazoid family I killed today. Tomorrow is going to be a very bad day in roachland.


In the mean time, I have a tremendous mess to clean up. Flour, packaging, old shelf liners. It's all gotta go. Thankfully, tomorrow is trash day. So long, corpses. So long, infested packaging. So long, roaches.