Toxicity

The last of a long line of successive actions, I turn on the kitchen light only to find an adult female cockroach attempting to slurp up some dried shiny substance on the Spanish tile floor, maybe olive oil, maybe broth. Abdomen distended, pulsing like a Cajun accordion, the roach was focused as only someone eating bittersweet chocolate, black caviar, or brie can be. And slurping isn’t the right word because these bugs have neither lips nor tongue, possessing only chitinous labra, labria and steely mandibles to crush and crunch. For years we coexisted with roaches, resisting exterminator’s pleas to spray, in our tiny attempt to save environment and world, and by coexist, I mean we grew accustomed to occasional adults or nymphs scurrying under baseboards or behind cabinets, because our house’s bones are pushing eighty and arthritic crevices are everywhere. Tonight was just another evening in paradise that happened to sport an umber night visitor. Then our entomophobic cousin visited, only to scream as an adult roach flew from ceiling to floor, while she lay in bed at eleven pm. After a close reading of her shriek’s text and subtext, we told the bug guy to spray outside and bait crevices — which left us politely roach free for several years, until my eyes lit upon this six-legged thief which folks in our polite Southern neighborhood refer to as palmetto bugs, to avoid using the C-word, (no, not that favorite of Brits) which shows the ubiquity of these house horrors, who survive outside in back- or side-yard. And it struck me how lovely it was that roach-weight had been lifted from our shoulders and how their presence…