The Killing Fields
Wednesday, July 29th, 2009It was just like any other Sunday morning. I woke up early to go for a bike ride through the beautiful Indian countryside. I left at 7 and had an enjoyable time. I pedaled into the driveway, dropped my bike on the lawn, and went into the house. I immediately noticed something was not right. The screens were off the windows, the garbage can from the kitchen was in the living room, and it VERY quiet. If you have children under the age of 10 you know that a quiet Sunday morning is unusual. As I walked through the house into the kitchen I saw that all of the pans from the cabinets were out and dishes were in the middle of being done. There were items from the kitchen on the dining room table. I walked out the back door and scene that I saw helped me put together the puzzle of what had transpired that morning.
Recently, we’ve been seeing a cockroach here and there in the house. Being from Minnesota we are not very intimate with the “Indian National Insect”. So we passed off the occurrences as incidental and were quite satisfied by hitting intruders with some Roach Spray and watching them turn leg up. Our nannies comment “Where there are big ones there are babies” was dismissed as a polite warning. We should have taken her gentle comment more seriously.
That Sunday morning the backyard was filled with wasted cockroaches.
Stacy had stumbled across a popular cockroach hang out, under the sink, and had gone ballistic on them upon discovery. She had thrown out the Glad Garbage Bag box (which still had a few live ones cowardly hiding in the box even still when I was assigned to the clean up) and doused it with the garden hose. And as those those critters tried to high tail it our of the box she either mashed them with the bamboo pole or sprayed them with ‘HIT’ poison.
I could only imagine what the scene must have looked like and I feel bad for my poor wife, who hates those bugs.
We had thought that she hate annihilated the herd but the next few days reviled our infestation. To make a long story short, I now know what a female, male, pregnant, infant, adolescent, and unborn cockroach looks like. Yesterday we had an exterminator bomb the house. We stayed at our friends, the Thorns, (thanks guys) last night.
This morning there were many cockroach carcasses on the floor. Our housekeeper gave the house a good cleaning to dispose of the carnage. The exterminator guaranteed 6 months cockroach free living. But I have a feeling there are more to come soon enough. PS mom, your plane ticket is non-refundable :-).
