Unwanted House Guests 08/2012

There are 2 unwanted house guests that we just can't seem to get rid of:

1. Ants
2. Cockroaches

1. Ants are a given. They're small, they get into many things. They come out of the cracks in the walls, floors, and behind the wood frame on the doors. We spray poison but that's about all we can do.

2. Cockroaches: Every day we have about 5 in the house, mostly live. They prefer to come out at night. They crawl up the patio and under the doors, climb up drains, climb up the outside walls and in through the windows. They are big and fast. They often somehow end up falling on their backs, then get stuck that way, so in the morning I go around collecting stranded cockroaches and throw them out the window.

The company here at Marina Blanca spray inside and outside, but it doesn't seem to help. Of course, when I asked them to come out and spray again, their only answer was "well ma'am, it's cockroach season."

How to kill a cockroach: The first time I saw a giant cockroach was upstairs on the second floor. Cockroaches were "new" to the family since we didn't have them in the winter and the kids were very excited and agitated to see one. I took a big shoe and smashed it. Guts and Goo shot out of it all over the wall. It was very squished and stopped moving. Nicolas was very excited about mom's fresh kill and blew on it. Suddenly, it jumped up, entrails dragging behind it and started running around. All three kids went hysterical. Nicolas broke out into tears. Anaïs hustled everyone down the hallway to her bedroom.

Sadly it wasn't just the kids who were terrified, mom was too. So, I took the shoe and slammed it on the cockroach a second time. More guts and goo shot out and sprayed the wall. Really disgusting. I'm thinking this is an awful mess to clean up for one cockroach. This time he looked definitively dead. I got a wad of toilet paper and decided to pick him up and flush him down the toilet. Honestly, I had goose bumps and images of this thing coming back to life a third time, running up my arm. I will not lie, I was concerned...But he stayed dead.

I only stomp on a cockroach if it's moving at top speed and I have no choice because it might disappear under the couch or something. My new method (since I find at least one almost EVERY night in my bathroom), I put my hand in a washcloth, pick the thing up live and simply hurl it out the window. I have a tendency to pick them up too roughly 'cause sometimes their guts squish out a bit, ewe, yuk, but not sure that will actually kill it, so it too gets hurled out the window. Sometimes I miss the window and it ricochets back on me, springs to life and starts cruising around. That happened this evening. Wasn't too happy about it, but still managed to put it back out the window.

I have yet to start grabbing them with my bare hands, though that time may yet come...Yuk. They are harmless, just disgusting.

Kids are pretty impressive and getting used to cockroaches. One night, Anaïs came into my bedroom in the middle of the night and said "um, mom, there's a cockroach in my bed." Well, I figured I better get up because that's kind of an emergency. Sure enough, a cockroach climbed up inside Anaïs's mosquito net above her bed. I trapped the thing in the net, unhooked it from the ceiling, then dangled it out of the net outside off her balcony. I showed her the evidence of the empty net a few times, but she didn't believe me that it was gone, so we didn't hook her mosquito net back up that night. I double checked her covers, just in case because I know a cockroach in my bed would totally freak me out. Once we established her bed was clear, she was able to go back to sleep, albeit, she probably got eaten to death that night by a million and one mosquitoes that fly everywhere (thus the mosquito nets.)

I was really impressed that Anaïs at 9 years of age didn't go screaming and freaking out over a cockroach in her bed. She remained quite calm. I figured most other little girls would have screamed and cried hysterically. When I freak out, I try to only freak out on the inside and show a stoic front to the kids so they remain calmer. Still, cockroaches, yeah, I'm getting sick of them. Too bad you can't turn them into soup or something...free meal, lots of protein.