Bug Wars: The Orthoptera Strikes Back
I finally found a place on a Saturday. Well, really it was a Thursday, but I made my final decision on a Saturday. It was a studio apartment in Harlem on 126th and Lenox which I thought was funny only because Lenox is also called Malcolm X Blvd. Not the type of place you’d expect me to live. However, it was about as perfect as I was going to find in New York City for the money I had to spend.
When Alberto The Broker showed me the place, he opened the kitchen cabinet in a very Vanna White style to demonstrate the space available. What he didn’t anticipate was a moderately-sized cockroach scurrying across the cabinet floor, disturbed by the blinding light that had spilled into the storage area. Alberto didn’t say anything specifically about the roach; he simply said that the place could be ready to move in to by the middle of November. I assimilated the info and went about my business.
On the Saturday, I had gone to the city to look at another place in Harlem, very close to the place on 126th. I took a walk by the aging brownstone on 127th and realized immediately that this was not the place for me. In a line of freshly renovated, pristine-looking brownstones, this one stood out as run-down, deteriorated, and entirely worth the money they were asking for. So I took a walk over to the 126th Street apartment again, just to see the area, and Alberto was standing there like a ghost. I felt like I was in one of those movies where the devil is always watching you and following you around, certain that eventually you will give into his tempting offer even if you don’t agree from the beginning. The spooky part is that Alberto looks like he really could be a spawn of hell and it wouldn’t surprise me if he was a not-so-distant relative of a fallen angel. After all, he is a broker.
But regardless of the spiritual red flags, I signed a lease and put a payment down and all was well. Only a couple of days to go until moving to the city for good.
On the Wednesday my lease started, November 15, I went to pick up the keys from the building superintendent. He was a nice guy and he went up to the place with me where I saw the brand new stove ready to be connected. The super said that the stove would be hooked up before I moved in on Saturday and then a roach crawled across the kitchen counter. It was a silencer for us both since I was under the impression that the exterminator had already been there and since the super hadn’t planned on defending the sanitary conditions of the place. He quickly spoke up, saying that the exterminator was coming the next day. This appeased me and we went our separate ways for the day.
On Saturday I woke up bright and early and moved in to my new place with the help of some of my friends from church who were so very awesome to come on relatively short notice. As soon as we got into the apartment, I noticed that the stove was not hooked up. This frustrated me a bit since the lease had been active for three days already and the apartment hadn’t been inhabited at the time. Then I got another thought: What about the exterminator? If the super, who lives on the premises, couldn’t hook up a stove, why should I think for a minute that the exterminator had been there? With foolish trepidation, I opened the cabinet door.
There it was. Two little antennae swirling around, circling me as though I was a target of some sort and the roach was about to take its best shot. I didn’t kill it, though. I never liked the crunching noise of a roach under hand. Instead, I called the super and let him know the situation. He came up to the apartment and began to hook up the stove, insisting that the exterminator was on his way. I naively took his word for it and continued to busily move my stuff into the studio. Before we finished, the super told me that the exterminator would be there before 1 pm. So I waited.
By 2, no one had shown up and so another call was placed to the super. There were two definite roaches at that point, both hiding out in the cabinet like lost soldiers in the wilderness. Or so I thought.
It was after 4 when Execution Pest Control finally showed up at my door. The man was very Carribean and wore sunglasses even though the sun was well on its way down. A toothpick stuck out from the side of his mouth and he carried a bucket with all sorts of unlabeled supplies which likely could have stripped the paint from the walls if not used properly. I told him where the problem was and he opened the cabinet, exposing the two roaches. Without hesitation, he sprayed into the cabinet, destroying the bugs practically on contact. Looking back, I can’t blame him. It was the natural reaction and the most obvious thing to do. The American Army made the same mistake in the Ia Drang Valley in Vietnam and the retaliation was the same.
Roaches began to squirm out of the cabinets from under all of the cracks, crevices, and corners, covering the walls and the ceiling and falling onto the floor. The “Executioner” did his part, spraying to the left, stomping to the right, slapping inch-long roaches with his bare hand so that they were splattered against the walls. He did all he could but it was too much. He needed to get reinforcements. The bad news for me was that, also like Ia Drang, I wasn’t going to get my reinforcements for a long time. I would have no choice but to spend the night in hostile territory.
I was about to lay down to bed. I had killed over 15 cockroaches and I knew that I wasn’t done yet. But to sleep? That just seemed ludicrous. How could I lay down in the dark, knowing that it was night time and prime conditions for my enemies to pursue me? What on earth was I to do? Then a voice came to me from the distance.
Remember the bed bugs.
Yes, they were smaller. No, they didn’t leave as big of a mess as the roaches did. But none of that was the point. The point was that it was still my home. None of those critters were paying the least in rent and they tried to eat my food and drink my water. Fortunately for me, Christian ethics do not apply to bugs.
That night, I slept with the lights on because I knew the roaches couldn’t handle it. They’d hardly venture out from their hiding places so long as the lights were on. It worked like a charm. I woke up to find only two roaches on the walls and (thankfully), none in bed with me.
The day saw action in bursts, the roaches coming in twos, threes, and fours or just not at all. I considered taking action myself but thought it would be best to wait for the professional before I took on the problem renegade style. One more night with the lights on and then I would rally with the Executioner for a massacre.
It was a Monday afternoon and I was on my lunch break. I took the 2 train up to my apartment and waited for the super and the Executioner to arrive. Within minutes, we were all together and ready to exercise vengeance. The Executioner started, spraying a strange concoction all over the cabinets, behind the fridge, against the wall, and in various other places. Some roaches tried to make a break for it but met with a shoe or a hand. The toxic fumes began to make their way through the apartment and so we quickly vacated the area and went our separate ways. Six hours later, I returned with the artillery: my all-time favorite pesiticide bombs. They were two-hour bombs, a quicker release with not as much residual as I would have liked but it was already late and I was beginning to lose energy after all of the days of battle I had endured so far. So I set the bombs and retreated to 5B, an apartment to which I acquired a key to use as a bunker for when I needed to regroup. At 2023, I returned to my apartment.
There was a bazaar of roaches around the apartment on the floor. Most of them were on the their backs, some of them still had legs wiggling weakly in the air as if someone would have helped them if they hadn’t been poisoned beyond saving already. I got out the vaccuum and consumed as many as I could, leaving the motor on for a while to make sure that what death didn’t result from the chemicals would be completed by the crudeness of the machine. The major offensive had been won. But there was still a world of defense to be had.
Standard defenses were used for the remainer of the week but on Thursday I finally made it to Home Depot where I bought a bunch of treats for what roaches remained. Among them was my favorte: the roach trap. Twelve of these things were placed in various strategic locations around my dwelling place. The traps were equipped with time-release poison, giving the roach enough time to consume the poison, return to the nest, and infect his friends so they could all croak at the same time. I complimented this with roach gel and a mobile can of the most potent roach killing spray available over the counter.
The roaches are relentless. They don’t give up easily and they certainly don’t accept defeat. But let it be known that, as with the bed bugs, we have won this war. The roaches will not dare to infest my cabinets, my countertops, or any other part of my living space again.
Down with The Orthoptera. Long live the Arthropoid.