When is a cockroach just a cockroach?
Fun fact: When a cockroach is decapitated, it dies from starvation.
There’s more.
If a cockroach is born in a freezer, it can survive in that climate. That’s how well they adapt to their environment.
Some of the females stay pregnant for life, endlessly spitting out babies.
Last one.
They can survive under water for thirty minutes.
How I wish I didn’t know any of this.
The first kind of roach I met was the one that hung from the end of a clip. Raised in upper middle-class suburbia, I was familiar with ticks. Beetles. Ants. Caterpillars. It wasn’t until I went to college and started smoking weed that I even heard the word “roach,” and for a year-and-a-half, I only Associated that term with a clip of colorful feathers and shiny beads.
Sophomore year, my friend Karen invited me to move into a two-bedroom apartment near the campus of our downtown university. There were four of us and we experienced the normal roommate hiccups: rules about boyfriends spending the night, dishes in the sink and possession of the remote. But living in a 20-story apartment building introduced me to a different kind of roach.
Within a few months, large brown bugs began to appear in our apartment. “What the hell is that?” I screamed the first time I saw one. My roommate casually picked up a shoe and didn’t bat an eye at the disturbing crack that came from squishing the shell. Thirty-five years later, I can still hear it.
A dozen cans of Raid and several exterminations didn’t get rid of them, so we went to Defcon 5 – a “thorough” extermination. “You'll need to take everything out of all the cabinets and drawers. Put everything in the middle of the rooms and cover it with plastic,” the building manager told us. “And you’ll need to be out of the apartment for at least three hours.”
We blasted Duran Duran and Depeche Mode and partied with the only roach I’d ever known until three months ago until every closet, cabinet and drawer was empty. At 7:30 the next morning, John arrived.
“Don't worry,” he assured us toting his canister around. “We'll get them this time.”
John was very chatty. Especially about cockroaches. “They travel through water pipes,” he lectured. “That’s why they kept coming back.” We followed him as he sprayed around the edges of the living room. “You kill some with a regular extermination but mostly you just scare ‘em off. They go to your neighbor’s and when they get fed up, they get an extermination and then bibbity bobbitty boo… they pack their bags and move back in with you.
We trailed him into the kitchen. “What’s this here?” he asked with disdain as he pointed to the top of the refrigerator. It was our roommate Linda’s paper bag collection – dozens of varying sizes jammed at odd angles between the top of the fridge and cabinet that hung above it.
“Gotta get rid of those,” he instructed.
I dug through the plastic-covered piles in the living room and found a box of trash bags, dragged a chair into the kitchen and climbed on up. I no sooner touched the first bag, and a hundred roaches scurried everywhere – down the fridge, into the open cabinets, onto the counters.
I screamed at the top of lungs for a very long time. I couldn’t stop shaking and the goosebumps on my arms and legs turned to welts. I thought I was going to pass out. John laughed.
“They like paper,” he chuckled, as if I hadn’t just done a walk-on in the most disturbing horror movie ever made. There was entire colony of the disgusting creatures – a colony that had existed for God knows how long without any of us knowing. “They especially like the pressure they feel from crawling into the fold at the bottom.”
“I need a drink,” I whispered.
Karen appeared with a fifth of gin and a 2-liter bottle of tonic. I stood in the kitchen, gin in one hand, tonic in the other, and alternated swigs until my breathing returned to normal.
That was my first traumatic experience with the prehistoric pests that have existed for over 300 million years. Unfortunately, it wasn’t my last.
Ten years later, I moved into my first New York City apartment. It was tiny, but enchanting. Mary Tyler-Moore would have lived there. It was everything I’d dreamed about living there. OK. It was on the first floor and I could hardly turn around in the kitchen. But there was a patio out back that provided my own sliver of outdoor Manhattan real estate.
There was no K-Mart or Target in the City then, so I walked the seven blocks to the Tru-Value and schlepped home carrying several large bags with a roll of indoor-outdoor carpet slung over my shoulder. I decorated my space with flower boxes and a papasan chair, and made a makeshift coffee table out of milk crates. It was amazing. Until I realized my sanctuary gave insects, including my old adversary, easy access to my home.
Within a few months of moving in, I opened my dresser to find a solitary roach nestled in the corner of the drawer. Deja vu all over again.
The landlord didn’t have an exterminator and I had no money to get one. I couldn’t live in a cloud of Raid, so I told everyone I knew of my problem hoping there was some secret Manhattan magic trick that would make them disappear.
My yoga teacher, Deedee, claimed to have the answer. “You need Chinese Chalk,” she said in a tone that indicated I should have known this.
Made of dried chrysanthemum powder that is solidified into sticks of chalk, she told me all I needed to do was outline my entire apartment with it. “Roaches groom,” she explained in her breathy voice. “They walk through it and when they groom themselves, it attacks their nervous system and kills them.”
I was a little queasy about starting a Dr. Demento roach laboratory in my apartment, but it was a couple of bucks for a box and wouldn’t hurt my cats. I decided to give it a go.
Deedee took the train with me uptown to the Bronx. I hear you. You’d think we would’ve gone down to Chinatown. Turned out Chinese Chalk was illegal in the US. The FDA had cracked down on the Chinatown shops but had yet to tackle the Bronx.
Great, I thought. I’ll be a criminal as well as a murderer.
My adventure to the Bronx included a stop at a takeout dive for empanadas and a Goya peach nectar, Deedee dancing to music that blared from a boombox on the corner of Webster and 180th, and a whirlwind trip through a Puerto Rican clothing boutique. And of course, into a bodega to get the Chinese Chalk.
When I got home, I crawled around my apartment on my hands and knees, outlining every inch of the hardwood floors in Chinese Chalk. It worked. Within a few days, no more roaches!
John was out. Deedee was in.
She may have been my new roach guru, but her influence went far beyond Chinese Chalk. Knowing her really made me question my spirituality. Her system was an amalgam of Buddhism, Hinduism and The Secret, long before anyone knew what that was. With help from her gentle nudges, I tumbled down a New Age rabbit hole.
DeeDee asked me to consider that every time I encountered a cockroach that it was a symbol of my own fears. She encouraged me to take advantage of the opportunity and question what it represented in that moment. I may not have had roaches in my apartment, but I did live in Manhattan. There was no shortage of the ancient beasts and before long, it became my default to ask myself what I was afraid of when I saw one.
It seemed I was rarely without a fear of some kind, so the practice actually proved to be very helpful. I became aware of things I didn’t even realize I was afraid of, which allowed me to figure out how to overcome them. It turned out to be even more valuable when I moved to Tampa and bought a house a decade later. I know they call them Palmetto bugs there, but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…
My two-bedroom bungalow was in the heart of the city with a gorgeous backyard that included bamboo trees, birds of paradise, a fish pond, and a pool. It didn’t take me long to realize that my own private piece of nature came with guests that included every kind of insect, small mammal and plant you can think of.
It was beautiful to look at, but I’m not exactly the outdoorsy type. I could tolerate the critters in my yard. Taking up residence in my house was a different story. I had Orkin on speed dial.
One of my favorite things was to clean the pool while I was in it. I felt pure joy prancing on my tip toes, skimmer in hand, to collect leaves and other debris. The crystal-clear water sparkling in the sun was the ultimate reward for my effort.
Although my relationship with the intrepid insect had changed with DeeDee’s help, and I no longer felt the compulsion to squeal like a 4-year old when one appeared, there was still a part of me that cringed at the twitching antennae and wanted to call in the Marines to use whatever weapons were necessary to destroy it.
It was obviously time to level up my New Age game. Thanks to Google, I found a deeper understanding of the roach’s place in the ecosystem of my backyard. I learned they feed on decaying wood and leaves, add nutrients to the soil through their waste and provide food for reptiles and small mammals.
I channeled my inner DeeDee and began to have conversations with them as I weeded and swept the flagstone. I thanked them for doing their jobs and wished them well… as long as they stayed away from me.
One sunny afternoon, after I finished cleaning the pool, I lifted the lid of the skimmer to remove the basket. As I pulled it out of the water, I noticed a large roach spinning round and round inside – the suction from the pump had created a whirlpool and it was struggling to free itself.A
I let the basket sink back down and clutched the skimmer like a warrior’s spear. As the water lapped around my thighs, I vacillated. War. Or mercy. A
Finally, I decided that I was ready to prove to myself that I was different from the woman who’d tortured a living creature with chalky poison. It was time to demonstrate that I had worked through the darkness of my fears. A perfect opportunity to show myself this six-legged varmint had absolutely no hold on me anymore.
Gingerly, I lifted a bamboo leaf from the basket and placed it beneath the roach. It wriggled as it tried to right itself and get traction. A few seconds later, it scurried up the slender leaf. I may not have wanted to kill it, but I certainly didn’t want to touch it. I dropped the leaf on the pool deck and watched it shake and shudder as it attempted to stand.
I said a little prayer, grateful that I made the “right” choice. That I had overcome my contempt and disgust enough to save its life. I was proud of myself for pushing through my fear and more than a little full of myself and my accomplishment.
I watched as the soggy roach sunned itself on the concrete, the water droplets around it evaporating in the afternoon heat. Finally grounded, it began to walk toward the shrubs at the edge of the pool deck. I held my arms out wide and looked up to the sky – a gesture of gratitude for this small victory.A
Then, out of nowhere, a gecko charged in from the right and devoured him in one bite.
Sometimes a roach is just a roach.