Second Hand
When I was a kid, my father (a cop) once told me he’d get about 3 calls a year regarding cockroaches crawling into people’s ears while they slept.
My first reaction was one of horror, my second being one of disbelief. I walked away thinking he was pulling my leg. Trying to instill a cleanliness ethic via exaggeration.
A few years later, my brother-in-law told me it happened to his wife. He sprayed Raid in her ear and took her to the Emergency Room. The Drs. on duty told him it’s a common thing, and most people use warm oil in leiu of insecticide as a remedy.
First Hand (From an old apt. nightmare thread)
When I finally had enough money to afford a decent apartment I found what I thought to be a great place known as The Baldwin Garden Apts. No more shitty, damp basement apts. for me! No more dealing with no(i)sy landlords living 8’ over my subterranean head. I paid the realtor her 12% commission, comfortable in the fact I was taking a corporately managed, spacious, first floor unit from here on in.
A few days after I moved in, as I opened the door to my new digs humming the “Moving on Up” theme from The Jeffersons, I saw something I’d never seen before or since. We’re talking wrath of God type stuff here. Maybe my father was right about skipping confession all these years. I thought to myself, “am I such an evil sinner that I deserve to have a huge black swarm of flying insects so wide and so dense I can’t see to the other side of my living room?” I freaked. Here it is 8PM Sunday night and I had no idea how to handle the situation. Luckily, there was a Pathmark open a mile or so up Grand Ave. I sped up there and grabbed as many cans of insecticide that would fit in the cart. I had every type and brand imaginable: Raid flying insect killer, D-Con ant and roach spray and Bengal brand industrial strength aerosol. I paid the cashier the four hundred and some odd dollars she rang up and headed back home to do battle.
Upon arriving home, I sprinted from my parking spot to the front door, bagfuls of spray cans clanging as I plotted my battle plan. I stripped off my shirt and wrapped it over my face in the form of a makeshift air filter mask. I smeared mud all over my torso and arms that I thought would serve as both camouflage and sting prevention. I kicked open my front door, spray cans in hand, firing them off like Clint Eastwood in a spaghetti western. The carnage lasted all of about 2 seconds. The instant the now larger swarm got a whiff of the poison, they stopped flying in midair and fell dead to the floor in unison…much in the same manner Wyle E. Coyote plummets down the Grand Canyon. Four Hoover bags later, I had the last of the enemy vacuumed off the floor.
Management contacted a “professional” exterminator the following day who counted even identify the genus or species of the pests. I opted to play it safe by caulking up every crack and crevice throughout the apartment. Ten tubes later, every possible entrance into my apartment was now blocked with a ¾” thick bead of clear silicone.
The caulk barrier held up for the four years I lived there. Every spring, I’d put my ear to the ground and look through the silicone that covered the gap between the wood floors and shoe moulding. I watched & jeered those aggravated & frustrated little buggers pacing back and forth behind my Phenoseal barricade, knowing they could no longer come up from the basement of another visit.
I’ll concede, even though manmade barriers are effective in keeping out flying perennial “whatever-they-ares”, they don’t work as well against cockroaches. Not that I’ve had numerous encounters with the breed, but the few I have had make my skin crawl. I’m the type who never cooked and the only food I kept was safely sealed behind either a refrigerator door or in a tin can. I’ve heard too many urban legends about them crawling in people’s ears while they’re asleep and the thought of a disease carrying, six-legged piece of vermin burrowing toward my brains is more creepy than I can put into words. The most memorable roach I ever came across was one I nicknamed Scout. This son-of-a-bitch was huge: almost the size of horse in need of a saddle…and cocky. I remember our first and only meeting like it was yesterday. It was a hot Wednesday night and I was watching The Howling, Part 4 on HBO. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a shiny, brown and very imposing object make its way from the kitchen into the living room. This bastard wasn’t cautiously darting into new environs like his much smaller cousins would - he was strutting. “Holy shit!” I yelled out, springing up from the couch like it had burst into flames. One thing I knew for sure, there was no way in creation I was gonna to even attempt to squash him barefoot. Besides, all 180# of me might not even put a dent in this roach’s body armor. Even if I had been wearing Timberland work boots and was victorious in the old fashioned method of extermination, I knew I’d need a snowplow to scrape the mess off the floor. I ran to my very well stocked extermination supply cabinet and grabbed a can of the Bengal brand aerosol – a product I’ve since learned has been banned by the EPA because of its potency. I started spraying down my gigantic new enemy like he as Charlton Heston in the Planet of the Apes. He neither sped up nor slowed down…he just kept strutting. I don’t know whatever became of my most unwelcome visitor. He squeezed out under the front door into the hallway and I never saw him again. Luckily, the old lady next door wasn’t in the hall at the time. Old Scout surely would’ve knocked her right off her feet had she been.
