Bug Hunt

To the American cockroach, Amazon Prime is the Quantas, the Acela ,that widens their world. Secreted in cardboard, they are invited into the best of homes, and they disembark with joy, and learn to hide at the first human screams.

In come the exterminators, the traps, the boxes of Borax.

Yet they persist.

Even in places that should be pristine, they skitter the halls at night. A few years back, when I worked at a rehab place down town, I would cross the skybridge over Charlotte at night to get dinner at the esteemed cafeteria at the Baptist hospital. One night as I was waiting for the elevator to dining, while I was contemplating a giant crack in the hospital's marble floor, I saw the King of Cockroaches out in the open. He was at least 3 inches long, and he was fast, but I was younger then,  and I gave him a fatal stomp. Perhaps his descendants fear that I will come back one night, with vengeance. But I do not go downtown anymore. Now any one who lived in the last half of the last century, if they worked in hospitals, must have heard the jokes about the huge roaches at Cook County (Or was it Bellevue? With urban legends, who knows?) These cockroaches were faster then the tube systems, and more reliable, and the hospital drafted them to carry specimens to the lab, at speed!

Now, I will even buy hairpins from Amazon, and the postman and UPS are always at the door. The possibilities for cockroaches in my apartment are enticing. I am a reluctant dishwasher, the dog does not always finish off his kibble, and there is debris everywhere .

How safe they must feel!  I stalk them with neither slipper, nor rolled up newspaper.But when I see one ,I know that I will find his carcass on the floor in the morning, and his death costs me no more than several thousands of dollars a year in litter and Tasty Treasures canned cat food, and hair balls vomited on my imported cotton tablecloth from Provence.

For I have a small indoor pride of half-breed Siamese cats, and they are as terrifying to me as they are to the roaches, since their two pursuits are the nightly Bug Hunt and the smashing of antique olive dishes.

To the roaches they are as fatal and relentless as the lions of Tsavo.  The pride hunts at night, and when I go into the kitchen ,I will see them crouched and waiting, for they have sensed something under the stove, and they will not be deterred.

I find the cracked brown cockroach in the morning, Doubtless the Siamese would prefer field mice, but the mice do not dare come through these walls. To the cats the mice would be as desirable as an antelope, but they must settle for baby jackals instead.

The nightly Bug Hunt is not only for cockroaches. The weatherstripping on my foyer door is not perfect, and the cats will wait on the cool tile, watching for June Bugs that bumble in under the door, seeking light.

And their pursuit of bugs is even more adventurous when they start going aerial, and chasing flies.
These cats always get their bug.

The moral of this is that cats are the best bug exterminators known. Get one or two. The cockroaches will be destroyed.

As will your sofa, your books, and your apartment-