Uninvited

It’s been three months now that I’ve lived in my current apartment, and Nuku and I have not been the only ones living in this 5 room vintage abode. Since before I moved in, the kitchen has been claimed by a hive of roaches that seem to be based somewhere behind the stove. I am not a fan.

I didn’t have my cooking gas turned on when I first moved in, so I mostly ate microwavables. I believed the lack of crumb collection and stain production for the first two weeks I lived here would put a damper on their ability to persist, but I was wrong. I still find them creeping around, and the regular cooking habits I’ve been employing have only served them further.

I’ve tried baits. I’ve tried poisonous sprays. I’ve tried seek-and-destroy operations involving a paper towel. I’ve considered napalm, propaganda flyers, converting them to Islam, signing them up for military service, and exorcism. Sometimes they go on hiatus for a week or two at a time, but they always return looking refreshed. Little bastards.

Really, they’re not hurting anything. But they’re supposed to be gross. I haven’t gotten sick or diseased. They only eat what I’m finished with; I’ve never seen them encounter food I hadn’t taken to first. Indeed, when I enter the kitchen, they scurry away immediately, polite as can be. They realize they aren’t wanted, but a bug’s gotta eat.

In truth, I don’t even know that they ARE roaches. They’re little critters who scurry when the lights turn on, and they’re interested in my leftovers and stove stains. They may even be what restaurant managers like to tell customers are water bugs, something to mollify the masses by claiming what crawls in the kitchen are cute little misunderstood Disney creatures that sing and dance when we’re not looking. Personally I don’t find them to be all that intrusive, but it’s not inconceivable that a Pretty Girl will be a welcome guest at some point in my (near?) future, and she may not have a similarly enlightened (slovenly?) attitude about the difference between true tragedies and a pesky nuisance.

Regardless of the reason, the fact remains that I want them gone, and they won’t go. My personal characteristic of perseverance has been presented with a puzzle, just the sort of thing to focus and heighten my deep, inescapable need to solve it. This happens every time I’m faced with a challenge, a dilemma, or just about anything that needs to be corrected, fixed, or untangled. I achieve a state of Attention Surplus Disorder, virtually unable to move on to another task until the current one is accomplished. This focus typically persists to the exclusion of all other stimuli, such as eating, bathing, or being lit on fire. The gauntlet has been thrown down, and I have picked it up and embraced it. I’m going to chew up iron nails and spit out bullets and Hellfire until the only inhabitants not on my lease are the dust bunnies. And those fuckers are next.

Also, I have little to focus my attention upon for the next five weeks while I wait for the next quarter to start.