La Cucaracha

Are you all sick of reading about COVID and corona and whatever else we’ve named it?  Are you tired of the lockdowns and the never ending misery of self isolation?  Well do I have a new nightmare for you!!!!  No, I’m not talking about the newly discovered murder hornets, but I bring you the tale of the tree and the roaches.  BUCKLE UP MY FRIENDS.

If you are someone who is afraid of bugs, then this story may not be for you.  But I promise it will take your mind off the pandemic we’re currently facing.  Saturday was the first time I didn’t think about corona since this mess began in March.  Silver lining!

So, my neighbor right next door to me, who is basically family at this point, was having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad tree taken down from her yard this past Saturday.  I cheered this decision, because I really hate nature and trees, and this particular tree was a problem because it had ivy growing on it.  Ivy usually isn’t bad, but we shared a fence that had ivy growing on it when we moved in, and we mutually agreed to rip that shit out because bugs like ivy, and bugs got in our homes.  This is why I hate nature.  Anyway, the tree guys came on Saturday morning and Eric made the decision to stay awake after work because nobody sleeps when a tree is being taken down outside your bedroom.  No biggie – he’s been up for long periods of time before.  THANK GOD HE DIDN’T GO TO SLEEP.

A few hours into the tree demolition, we hear screaming.  And then my phone starts blowing up with text messages from my neighbor.  The ivy that was on our fence a year ago wasn’t the problem my friends.  Oh no, the tree was the problem.  She explained to me that the roach motel was discovered inside the tree.  I thought, OK, thank goodness it has been found, it’ll be over forever now.  I tell Eric they found a nest of roaches and Eric goes to the window to look outside and then he begins screaming.  Friends, we were under attack.

UNDER. ATTACK.

There are truly no words for what the next 4 hours of our lives were like.  I want you to picture a horror movie of roaches and then multiply it by 12.  This was the reality my neighbor and I faced.  I want you to now envision what was happening outside our homes.  Eric was outside with a huge spray wand of poison, spraying and dancing like a tap dancer to murder the enemy infiltrating our home.  I was running up and down the driveway in my sleep shorts and a tank top with no bra, HEAVILY pregnant, holding two cans of Raid like they were guns in my holster, screaming at every bug.  Charlotte was screaming from the closed screen door, “GET THE COCKAROACHES!!’ and my poor neighbor was running up and down with various cans of poison hysterical crying and apologizing profusely.  The tree guys helped by getting a leaf blower and proceeding to BLOW ROACHES EVERYWHERE.  And in the midst of all this?  Our other neighbor two doors down was having a first birthday parade for her dog.  So there was a dog AND car parade as we ran around in our roach war.

When I tell you Eric was outside for 4 hours killing roaches, I am not exaggerating.  Our homes looked like roach graveyards.  He must have killed 500 just by his tap dancing.  He swatted them off the sides of our house as they tried to climb the walls.  The exterminator came to take care of the rest, Eric went to bed at 7 PM and my neighbor and I cried together multiple times.  But we didn’t think about corona!!!

So far since that day, the only roaches I’ve seen are dead in my pool.  Now that the tree is gone, hopefully our bug problems are too.  Or the roaches that escaped will never forget they lost this war and come back to fight us again.  I’ve got my raid bitches.  I’m ready.