The Cockroach Story

We've had some cockroaches lately.

It's a different infestation - and, indeed, a different apartment - than last fall, when dozens of the big outside cockroaches kept invading our house. I finally went mad with the Raid and the traps and we never saw another one.

The ones we have now, though, are all different sizes and colors. Little ones. Big ones. Black ones. Brown ones. And the cool ones with black and brown stripes. Not a lot of them, but lots of variety.

And I don't know why, unless late summer is just the season for cockroaches to take a vacation from the omnipresent heat and humidity and move indoors for a while. This apartment is even cleaner than our last one. What with the boy crawling all over the place and a constant need for clean bottles the amount of filth is usually very small.

So I say all that to say this: it was Saturday morning. I'm sitting in the living room. Across the room I see a cockroach, crawling. Also crawling in the same area is John. John and the cockroach were on a collision course! I jumped towards them, but it was too late; John had the cockroach in his hand, and he was bringing it towards his mouth.

I got there in time to stop the unspeakable from happening, though. I grabbed John's hand and stopped it before he could feed himself the horrid bug.

"A roach a roach!" I gibbered, "oh my God he's got a cockroach! In his hand!"

So Sonya ran to us and she and I attempted to simultaneously stop the kid from eating the cockroach while trying to knock the insect out of his tight little fist. John thought this was the height of comedy and giggled gleefully...though he might also have been laughing because the bug was tickling the inside of his hand as it tried to wiggle free.

Finally I managed to pry his fingers open (and feel the lashing antennae and spiny legs) and the roach fell out. I killed it. And then I washed John's hand.