Some
years ago—during summer, as I recall—I reached incautiously into our
cabinet and immediately leapt back with a screech; I had found what every
hygienic-minded housewife hates: a cockroach. And where there is one,
there are sure to be more.
Like many females, I’ve always been a bit squeamish about bugs that weren’t roly-polies, ladybugs, or daddy-longlegs. Okay, more than a bit squeamish—but ever since seeing loathsome pictures of them as a child, cockroaches have ranked only one step below my nemesis, spiders. This disgust increased to nausea in high school after witnessing numerous large cockroaches in a certain house in Indiana—and disregarding politeness, I’d thereafter refused to eat any food that had been inside the house or to even step inside if I could avoid it. On another occasion one evening in a South Carolina city, I’d spotted a cockroach as long as my hand skitter across a sidewalk. *shudder* Though the insects invading my kitchen were of a much smaller variety than those in more eastern states, these were definitely some version of the species—not a run-of-the-mill beetle. Thus, the reader can imagine my horror upon discovering such...things in my own house. My skin still crawls at the thought of them and their proximity to me.
I spent that memorable afternoon cautiously pulling each bottle, bag, box, and canister off our shelves, killing what beetles I could find, and freely expressing my revulsion with many shrieks and shuddering withdrawals, for no one else was home to witness my reactions nor to rescue me from this duty which my disgust compelled me to execute immediately. I even foolishly tried to caulk the cracks between the shelves and the back of the cabinet. It was all I could think of to keep them out, but even if I had figured out how to get the goop out of the tube (it had dried up, we found), Joel informed me upon his return that it wouldn’t have stopped the bugs from chewing right through it. After Joel corrected my misapprehension about caulking, he left to fetch some cockroach poison—brown gunk that we squirted in a few places we thought the roaches were likely to venture. I went to bed that night with ears alert for the slightest rustle that would indicate the disgusting critters were creeping toward our bedroom in search of revenge. However, to my great relief, the only roaches we found after that were dead ones, and we’ve never had another invasion since.
Like many females, I’ve always been a bit squeamish about bugs that weren’t roly-polies, ladybugs, or daddy-longlegs. Okay, more than a bit squeamish—but ever since seeing loathsome pictures of them as a child, cockroaches have ranked only one step below my nemesis, spiders. This disgust increased to nausea in high school after witnessing numerous large cockroaches in a certain house in Indiana—and disregarding politeness, I’d thereafter refused to eat any food that had been inside the house or to even step inside if I could avoid it. On another occasion one evening in a South Carolina city, I’d spotted a cockroach as long as my hand skitter across a sidewalk. *shudder* Though the insects invading my kitchen were of a much smaller variety than those in more eastern states, these were definitely some version of the species—not a run-of-the-mill beetle. Thus, the reader can imagine my horror upon discovering such...things in my own house. My skin still crawls at the thought of them and their proximity to me.
I spent that memorable afternoon cautiously pulling each bottle, bag, box, and canister off our shelves, killing what beetles I could find, and freely expressing my revulsion with many shrieks and shuddering withdrawals, for no one else was home to witness my reactions nor to rescue me from this duty which my disgust compelled me to execute immediately. I even foolishly tried to caulk the cracks between the shelves and the back of the cabinet. It was all I could think of to keep them out, but even if I had figured out how to get the goop out of the tube (it had dried up, we found), Joel informed me upon his return that it wouldn’t have stopped the bugs from chewing right through it. After Joel corrected my misapprehension about caulking, he left to fetch some cockroach poison—brown gunk that we squirted in a few places we thought the roaches were likely to venture. I went to bed that night with ears alert for the slightest rustle that would indicate the disgusting critters were creeping toward our bedroom in search of revenge. However, to my great relief, the only roaches we found after that were dead ones, and we’ve never had another invasion since.
After that incident, disgusted with the trouble I’d had getting at the bugs
around all our little spice bottles, and disturbed by the idea of them
crawling over or even into our containers of food, I made a few changes. First, while I had everything out, I cleaned the shelves thoroughly, removed the
ragged plastic covering on the bottom of one of the shelves and gave it a
fresh coat of paint. I then moved the soup cans from their plastic bin
under my makeshift counter/cutting board into the pantry, put the
spices into the soup’s former drawer, and on the spice’s old shelf, set
boxes of nuts, Splenda, and sugar free jello (the latter of which Joel still hasn’t eaten these many years later... how long do those last?). I
then made two trips to Walmart in which I bought far too many plastic containers in an attempt to find ones
that fit both the shelves and the contents I hoped to place in them. Some I
returned, some I gave away to Goodwill, and some I managed to use. I
stored my lesser-used boxes of tea in one such large plastic bin, poured
the bagged sugar and the boxed macaroni into others,
tucked individual tea bags into a tin, and generally organized the
contents of the shelves. Thus, though the infestation had been a horrible
experience, it at least motivated me to greater storage efficiency, and that, at least, I have not regretted.
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