I’ll get straight to the point. I don’t like sharing my home with cockroaches. I can’t imagine anyone who does. I’ve been told my reaction to these vile creatures is rather manic.

Spiders (except for the super large ones) crickets, centipedes, silver fish, ants, flies, and wasps I can deal with in an adult-like manner. Roaches are a different story. They are Satan’s houseguest. I just can’t have that kind of evil lurking in the bathroom and kitchen.  

So when a roach fell out of a box and onto my toes the day after we moved into our quarters in Georgia, I knew the battle had begun. Even though it’s a battle I’ll end up losing.    

My roach neurosis got me thinking about all the local critters military spouses happen upon as they move from one duty station to the next. I asked around and received some jaw-dropping stories. More on those in a moment.  

The only time I’ve felt empathy for a roach was in the eighth-grade after reading Franz Kafka’s oddball novella “The Metamorphosis.”  The main character, Gregor Samsa, wakes up one morning to discover he’s turned into a “monstrous vermin.” Yet he still wants to go to work, despite being a bug. Now that’s dedication.

I know my roach obsession is not normal. My neighbor Carol, told me she’s at peace with the buggers and just “shoos” them away. While her approach is Zen, mine is pure zany. To reach her Zen state Carol calls them "Palmetto bugs." My preference is "@#$%^& vile roaches." Carol has learned to accept roaches as part of life in coastal Georgia. When she sees a roach she thinks: Sand, beach, ocean, Hilton Head.

In the same situation, I think: My day is ruined. I cannot function. Life as I know it cannot go on until I hunt down and slaughter this roach, dispose of its carcass and sanitize every inch of where it may have been. 

A week after moving in, I called the exterminator. A few days later, Rebecca, a young woman carrying a tin can of poison rang my doorbell.  Before I could utter a word, she took charge like a no-nonsense diner waitress rattling off the daily specials.

“All right. We have three types of roaches in southern Georgia. The American cockroach. They’re the big ones. They come from the outside and die indoors. The second is the Asian cockroach. They’ll be in your garden. And they fly. The third is the German cockroach. They’re the smaller ones and when you get them, they are a real problem.”

With that Rebecca headed to the window sills in the dining room. I followed behind like a recruit following her drill sergeant.

“Um, excuse me,” I said. “I lost consciousness after the flying roach part.”

“Yeah, they fly. They sometimes get inside.”  

Having a roach expert in my midst, I decided to take advantage of the situation. 

Me: “Do roaches have any redeeming qualities?”

No-Nonsense Rebecca: “Other than being nasty creatures? No.”

Me: “People down South like to call them Palmetto bugs.”

No-Nonsense Rebecca: “They’re just the big ‘ole American roach. They are Naaas-ty. I can’t stand them.”

Me: “But you’re the bug lady.”

No Nonsense Rebecca: “That doesn’t mean I have to like them. I get satisfaction out of killing them.”

As Rebecca finished and I showed her the door, I was relieved to see in my driveway her small white pick-up truck with no big cartoon bug straddling the top of the cab.

“That would be embarrassing,” she said.

I agreed. “For both of us.”  

Sensing my unease, Rebecca said, “I do more on this street than others.”
I had one last question. “Any other bugs I need to worry about?”

“Spiders. But you have to kill those on contact.” And with that I said goodbye to my new battle buddy.

But late last night, a few weeks after Rebecca’s visit, a roach fired the first shot, skittering across the bathroom vanity before finding refuge behind the plastic cup dispenser. I grabbed the first weapon I could find: A can of hair spray. I stood in my Sponge Bob Square Pants pajamas aimed the hair spray at the dispenser and contemplated my options.

I could think about the beach, the sun and ocean. I could think about poor Gregor Samsa. I could let out a war cry and unleash a poison gas attack with the hair spray. Or, I could rally my sleeping husband out of bed and let him deal with it. I chose option four.

Ticked off more with me than the roach, my husband sighed heavily, took the hairspray can out of my hand and headed into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. WACK! THACK! WACK! Came from behind the door. A moment later the door opened.

“Did you get him?”

“Yes,” my husband said, climbing back into bed.

As always, I needed details.“How did you kill him?”

“I crushed him.”

“With the hair spray bottle?”

“No, with the cup dispenser.”

“What!? Did you clean it off?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“With water and a paper towel.”  

“You didn’t use disinfectant?”

“You can do that in the morning.”

“I’m not touching that thing.”

“Were any of his body parts stuck to the dispenser?”

“No.”

“Where is he now?”

“I flushed him down the toilet.”

“How big was he?”

“Tanya… we’re in Georgia and the roaches are here to stay, so you’re going to have to get cordial with them because they aren’t going anywhere.”

“I think that’s the first time anyone’s used ‘cordial’ and ‘roach’ in the same sentence,” I said. “I’m not getting cordial with them.”

“What are you going to do, move out?” my husband asked sarcastically.
“No, I’m going to keep waking you up to kill them.”   

My romps with roaches are butterflies and lady bugs compared with what other wives have been through. I heard from a number of military wives who’ve had indoor experiences with scorpions. Apparently these vicious creatures are hard to kill. One wife told me of repeatedly whacking one with a frying pan at Fort Sill, Okla. An Army brat friend said when she was a baby stationed in Florida with her family, her mother kept the legs of her crib in water to thwart scorpion attacks.

Another, Kathy, told me of a scorpion heading towards her baby in the family room of their quarters at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif.
“I grabbed a shoe and started hitting it and it kept moving,” she said. “I felt like I hit it a hundred times. I then got a paper towel and threw it in the trash.” A few minutes later her uncle (a practical joker by trade) called. As Kathy relayed the story, he told her scorpions don’t die easily and she should put it in the freezer to ensure its death. “So I put it in a Ziploc baggie in the freezer.”  It stayed there for a few days until her husband came in from the field. He laughed and assured her it was safe to throw it out.
  
Another friend, Ronda, told a tale of roaches the size of index fingers and geckos in her quarters in Hawaii. The geckos had the unwieldy habit of detaching their tails, which continued to wiggle after separation.
 “The locals said having a gecko in the house was a sign of good luck, so we learned not to kill them,” she said. “Then we learned that geckos eat cockroaches. It was really hard, but we soon left them alone and even started discussing and comparing them by size and color, and of course missing tails. I can’t even imagine sitting in my den here in Virginia calmly discussing the size, color, or tail of a gecko scurrying on my wall or seeing one before I turn out the light and go to bed. It’s definitely a Hawaii thing.”

Then there is my poor friend Krista, who literally had ants in her pants....