Don't Turn off the Lights

I feel my time in New York has been fairly rodent and pest free. Yes, I see mice on the subway tracks (and now at the Crew...) and have heard many a horror story about apartments being infested with cockroaches and/or bed bugs. My apartment's been fairly safe from it all; I saw a few cockroaches in the kitchen a long while ago, but Maria soon solved the problem with buying some spray. And a couple months ago I saw one in the bathroom that paralyzed me as I tried to kill it with hairspray (and yes, they are very resilient creatures; the hairspray didn't faze it at all). Martha eventually saved the day and killed it for me without even blinking. And last month, as I was rearranging my room, I squashed one that ran across my floor as I was moving my chest of drawers.

But then one got away. It was bedtime, I was in my pjs, and I saw it crawling across my bedroom wall, coming out of nowhere moving incredibly fast. I was a paralyzed for a moment before realizing I needed to get a shoe to smash. Curse not wearing shoes at that moment! And curse my getting paralyzed by insects; I know that if I turn away from them for a second they'll be gone, so I stare at them as long as possible. This is not the best defense mechanism. Well, those suckers are fast and I'm not quite fast enough as by the time I got the shoe and stared it down for a few seconds, it scurried away to where I couldn't get it. And then I never found it.

It's said that cockroaches like the dark--they usually go scurrying once a light is flipped on. So for that night and the next night I slept with my lamp on, for fear of it, or, and oh the horrors, it and all its friends, came in the dark and crawled all over me. I'm now sleeping with the lights off again, but just writing about this has given me the creepy-crawlys. Perhaps another night with the light on.....