The Insect Demimonde

Have you ever left a restaurant, satisfied with your meal, and only then wondered if there were cockroaches in the kitchen? I never have, until today. Typically, the cockroach question rears its ugly, radiation-proof head much earlier in the dining experience.

I don't know why, but today as I walked out of the restaurant after lunch, the thought crossed my mind, much in the same way one might think, "I wonder if there are any decent swimsuits left on sale at Target" or "When did all those clouds roll in?"

I feel gratitude toward my brain for being so laissez-faire about the issue.

I don't think I had ever seen a cockroach in my life until I traveled in West Africa, where I encountered roaches that were--we'll say--substantial. They lived in the toilet pits and it was surprisingly easy to ignore them after the first few visits. I never saw them in the houses.

Our house has roaches; few enough that we can try to ignore them, but enough to be worrisome if you happen to be sitting downstairs very late at night, alone, with the lights dimmed and the radio off. Then one will race across the kitchen floor and into the living room, following an invisible route that doesn't seem to make any sense. (what's in the living room? the roach country club?) Soon, it races back--but from a slightly different point, to another corner of the kitchen, so that you're not sure if it was the same roach, or another. A third stanza of scurrying, and it's clear that multiple roaches are in residence: no roach could have that many errands to run in a single evening.

Having read that roaches despise dryness, I once pointed a hairdryer at a crack I had seen a roach retreat into. I know it didn't do any good, but it made a pleasingly nasty mental image, stiff roach wings curling up like a dried apple peel, legs moving slower and slower and slower.

Why am I writing about cockroaches, about killing cockroaches? (catch me another day and I'll give them more-than-grudging respect) Beats me. Anything more meaningful and the words would have felt too sticky, I guess.