Author

Close Encounters of the Roach Kind
Ginger Hanson
©1998

I never knew big, flying cockroaches existed until I moved to Alabama. Before all the locals get their feathers ruffled, I didn’t say big, flying cockroaches don’t exist in other places. I just said that I had never seen one until I arrived in Alabama.

My father had retired from the U.S. Navy, I was sixteen at the time and to this day can’t think of any better way to keep an adolescent female from dallying at the front door after a date than the threat of an airborne roach attack. At least that’s how it worked for me once I saw one of these roaches in action.

I had to see this species of roach to believe they came that large and flew. I mean, I’d lived in various southern states.
I‘d seen roaches, but huge ones that flew? No way! Then one night on the car port, I got a demonstration. Not only do these monsters fly, but they fly at you. There ain’t a shy roach in the family. When they see a person armed with a shoe, their reaction is not to run and hide–they attack the person who holds the weapon.

And if it’s a woman, they know they have a pretty solid chance of survival because there aren’t many women around who like the crunchy sound a really DEAD roach makes. Therefore, women won’t step on the roach unless under extreme duress, such as their significant male other hasn’t responded to the terrified shrieks. Only when faced with no other alternative than a live roach in the bedroom will a woman crunch one.

On the other hand, crunching roaches underfoot or even picking up dead ones by a leg doesn’t seem to faze guys. I worked with a soldier at Fort Rucker who hid a dead roach in an accident report on my desk. My screaming response when I opened the report and saw the dead roach rattled the walls of that World War II era building. In those days. I couldn’t discriminate between a live roach and a dead roach. All my brain processed was ROACH and it went immediately into the SCREAM mode. Some things have changed since my younger days. Now I can discriminate between live and dead roaches and I save my panicked screams for the live ones.

Okay. I’m exaggerating. I’ve learned to keep the vocal response low-key and personal. Like, “it’s just you and me. Mr. Roach. One of us is going to die!”

Several years ago it was a close call as to which one of us was going to die. It began one night in the garage when I spotted a roach on the ceiling. Trying to handle the situation alone, I didn’t scream for my husband. Instead, I grabbed the nearest can of bug spray. That was Mistake #1.

Mistake #2 was spraying a roach with nerve agent when said roach was perched on a ceiling. Especially a kamikaze roach. When the spray loosened those six little feet, down flew the roach. With unerring flight skill, he swooped through the air and landed in my hair.

Mistake #3 was my footwear. I had on flip flops. When I started my twisting, flapping dance to get said roach out of my hair. the flip flops slipped on the cement floor. I ended up in a screaming heap. My Dances with Roaches routine netted me two weeks on crutches. Bruised muscles turned my left leg purple from ankle to knee. I didn’t even have the satisfaction of a decent kill–my husband had to finish off the roach. Nor did he ever really understand how I ended up on the floor.

In the years since this incident, I’ve come to realize that my tale is another example of the difference between genders. When I tell a woman I ended up on crutches because a roach flew into my hair, she nods sympathetically. I mean, she thinks I was fortunate to survive the episode. When I tell a man a roach flew into my hair, they just shrug it off. How’d that put you on crutches? they ask. Why didn’t you just knock it out of your hair? With what, I query innocently? Your hand, he responds.

Touch a cockroach with my bare hand? I’d rather limp around on crutches for two years!

It’s hard enough for me to coat a roach with bug spray, whack it with a shoe and then sweep it into a dustpan. Which means I always keep at least a foot between me and any roach, be it live or dead. I couldn’t ever, ever touch one. I mean, we’re dealing with a major denizen of the insect world. They’re everywhere. To touch one would mean I might someday have to touch another.

Someone (probably a man) has taken the time to check out the cockroach population. It seems there are over 2.000 species found throughout the inhabitable parts of the earth. but most of them live in the tropics. And for those of you who are native residents, according to what I read, the big. flying roach of my story isn’t even a native Alabamian.

My nemesis originated in Central America and Mexico. He/She started wondering north before the American Revolution, liked what he/she saw, stayed and procreated. That’s why there are so many big, flying roaches around now–they’ve been procreating for the past 250 years. As these critters multiplied and their presence could no longer be ignored, the Southern tendency to give something distasteful a fake name started.

For some reason, Palmetto bug is a favorite euphemism for describing our big little buddy. I’ve also heard them called water bugs which is a misnomer since there really is a water bug and calling a water bug a roach is unfair to the innocent water bug. But there is probably a solid reason for this folk name–some roaches swim. Are you following me here? Some of these roaches fly and some of them swim, the rest just run quickly at you when you try and zap them with a shoe. Obviously, these little guys are extremely adaptive. They also have a real name which has nothing to do with palmetto trees or water.

Ready to impress your friends with your erudition? Next time you see a cockroach. yell “There’s a Periplaneta americana in here!” This Latin phrase loosely translates into “all over the American continent but prone to love Alabama, Florida and Georgia.”

The above information points to the fact that cockroaches are here to stay. Which means ongoing warfare. So let’s recap the rules for roach encounters: (1) no loitering on carports after dark; (2) don’t spray roaches with bug spray if they are above sprayee; and (3) wear dependable, laced footwear during the encounter. And remember, none of these rules matter if your male significant other is in the area. Then all you have to do is scream; it’s his job to kill and dispose of the roach.