Feeling "Buggy"

By Rachel Sokol/Greenwich Village Gazette

have lived in Manhattan for almost four years and must take a moment to boast about something...in the four years I've lived in this metropolis, I have never encountered a four-legged creature in my apartment. I'm talking about a roach.

Until recently. Yes, everyone, in the past three months I have spotted roaches in my apartment. The first one was spotted by my roommate, crawling on a lightswitch in the bathroom. She screamed. I screamed. The roach ran away to god knows where. I called the landlord nearing hysterics. I had no idea a roach would unnerve me so much. After all, I grew up in the suburbs where we had spiders and bees everywhere. I even spotted little mice in my kitchen when I lived in Boston. We were so upset about the roach-sighting that we junked our toothbrushes, fearing roach eggs were in them, junked our makeup and hairbrushes, and spent over $100 buying new bathroom doo-dads. How do we know the roach didn't crawl all over our loofah sponge and hair stuff? I plan to send that bill to the management company.

Maybe because roaches are so damn ugly, or maybe because they crawl so fast or maybe because they carry diseases...I don't know what it is about roaches, but they unnerve me. I literally have a panic attack when I see one. I can SEE my heart beating through my shirt and feel stains forming under my arms.

I felt every muscle in my body blanch and shake when I saw these roaches scamper by. One fell from my ceiling while I was on the phone talking with a girlfriend. I was checking my email, when out of the corner of my eye I saw something fall from the ceiling of my tiny apartment. The 'thing' then raced across the floor and into MY bedroom. I screamed. My friend screamed through the phone. She later told me she started to cry because she thought I was being attacked because of the scream I let out. I dropped the phone and started shaking; jumping on my couch in sheer terror. I called my landlady in hysterics, who sent someone to spray around my apartment. (Not an exterminator--just some guy who offered to spray Raid all over our apartment. Thanks a lot, buddy) My roommate and I spread out roach traps and hated being in the apartment. We started leaving spray-cans of bleach around figuring a nice squirt of bleach will kill the bugs instantly.

Ever since the first roach encounter, which was on a Thursday at 7am, I felt as if I had ugly bugs crawling on me all day long. "Those were not roaches," our landlady told us. "Those were waterbugs." Excuse me? A waterbug is in the ROACH family. That doesn't make me feel any better.

We went about 2 weeks bug-free (That we know of) after the light-switch roach. Then came the falling-roach-from-the-ceiling incident which almost made me faint. I called the landlady in hysterics again (I didn't mean to sound so hysterical; but I loathe bugs...can you tell?) and she sent the same guy to spray around and we went roach free (That we know of) for another few weeks. Apparantly, an exterminator only visit the building the second Monday of the month. We made sure we signed up to have a spray.

Yesterday I got home at 11pm, kicked off my shoes, and decided to watch a lil' Jay Leno before heading off to bed. I had just gotten settled on the couch when I heard a scratching noise above me. My heart started POUNDING and I just knew. I knew...my roommate was on the phone in her bedroom, and I could hear her small voice coming from behind the door. Sure enough, about ten feet away from where I was sitting, a roach was crawling ON our track lights/ceiling lights.

I screamed so loudly I felt my throat burn. The roach fell INTO my North Face jacket that was hanging off the coatrack. I screamed and screamed when I heard him crawling around inside my jacket. My roomie then comes running out and screams with me as the roach falls OUT of the jacket and on to the floor. He scampers across the floor, over our magenta-colored area rug and UNDER the couch.

"Kill it!" my rroommie cries.

"I'm not going near it!"

"Kill it! Rachel, please! Hit it with something!"

I try and crush it with the leg of one of our bar stools, but he scampered away just in time. I couldn't find the bleach, so screaming like I'm being attacked, I sprayed the bug with lime-scented 409; the closest thing I had within arms reach that may kill a bug. It may have slightly worked because the bug momentarily stopped moving after about 6 squirts of 409. I know, it sounds silly--but that was all I had. I also grabbed some hairspray and alternated between the 409 and hairspray. Coming out of her shock, my roommate grabbed a kitchen mug and put it over the bug, trapping him. We heard him scratching inside the mug, trying to get out. I cussed at the bug, and called him a mean little bastard, and some other 4-letter words.

"Get a book--a heavy one," I told my roommie, Jackie. She ran to my bookshelf. "Get 'The Chicago Manual of Style--an orange book!" I called. It was the heaviest book I had on my bookshelf. We put the book on top of the mug, just in case the roach managed to squeeze out from under the mug. Haha! Trapped! He stopped scratching. I hopes my hairspray and 409 fumes would eventually kill him while trapped under the "Happy Halloween" mug. Even with my windows open, and knowing I probably woke the whole neighborhood, I could not stop freaking out. I hardly slept the whole night.

"I wouldn't move that mug," said Jackie. We put a heavy candle on TOP of the book, triple-ensuring the bug would not escape from the makeshift jail.

So, I just called my landlady again from work to complain about the bug and once again they are sending someone to spray. I told her about the bug under the mug and she said they would take care of everything. In the interim, I am still devastated. I feel violated that a bug had the nerve to move into my apartment.

I know that everyone has roaches. My California friends say they've had roaches, too. A friend told us that one day he was in the kitchen with his wife and young daughter when his wife started screaming at the sight of a roach on her floor. Their young daughter started crying, "big bug! big bug!" and even tried to pick the roach up--she wanted it as a pet. Naturally, she didn't go after the 'big bug' but did wonder why mommy and daddy killed it.

I feel as if bugs are crawling all over me today. Ugh...bugs. Wel, I'll never be on "Fear Factor"--that's for sure. Unless someone enjoys my blood-curling screams.

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