26 September 2006

Roaches

I'm not talking about the bit left over at the end of the doobie/spliff/etc, but the 6 legged beasties with the indestructable carapace and the "fuck you" look on their little insectoid faces. I'm not sure how that is possible, but its true. Try looking one in the eye one day.

The issue is that some genius of modern architecture put this flat's water heater inside one of the kitchen cupboards. Of course, creating and ideal warm dark roach habitat. A little like those preferred by fleas.

A week ago my little sister came to here to stay, and I didn't want her thinking that your Aunty B could not manage the number of species living in the flat. So before her visit, I set those you beaut bombs off, one right in front of the open cupboard which had become Roach Dorado.

Effects: Sticky floor, and many roach cadavers in a localised "zone of impact". Sucessful strike to by Aunty B - huzzah! Unintended side-effect: A whole army of teeny tiny roach scouts looking for somewhere new to set up a homestead and make babies at the rate of approximately 1,287 per 24 hours. Places I have since found roach re-con include: crawling across my keyboard; inside one of my transparent plastic document sleeves for a client meeting; on the stove; on the bathroom cabinet; on the kitchen splash back. They are possibly some level of instar, to dredge up a bit of entomology for you, dear readers, and are only about 5-10 mm antenna to rear. Not too threatening now, but they will be in a couple of growth cycles.

The effect is kind of like that of the Iraq war on global terrorism, in a way.

3 comments:

meririsa said...

uuugh! HATE cockroaches... Poor you! Not suprisingly, our numbers have dropped since we started having to wash up baby bottles and do the dishes 2x per day (instead of once every few days). But I'm sure some suckers are still living it up behind the fridge.

Anonymous said...

Cue the roach stories...
I lived in a house in Brisbane where the roaches colonised every piece of electronic equipment. Press eject on the video and the video would come out with roaches sitting on it waving their antennae. Wake up in the night and wonder why your clock radio had disappeared - it hadn't, it was just the roaches making roachy love to the illuminated digits. We had to move house 3 times and fumigate each time to get rid of them.

I thought there were no roaches in the Love Nest until I cleaned out the laundry and found a roach latrine behind the sink.

J said...

I don't get them up here - just the occasional silverfish, which is kind of a novelty, they are so silvery and wiggly and not very offensive. Re the roach, I wonder if we need a 'make cockroaches cute' marketing campaign, to reform our atttitudes to them (seeingas they never seem to disappear entirely)- we could pretend that they were fabulous feng shui, or reincarnated rock and film stars (hello there James Dean roach), or call them pinkleberries or lovebeetles or something more cheery than cockroach 9which is afterall a pretty yuck name).