Moonbeam McQueen

Not to dampen your holiday spirit, but when I went to take a shower this morning, there was a roach the size of a Palomino pony in the tub, so I opted to wait to be clean until I got home from work.

These varmints are everywhere. The house is clean, but they hang around out of boredom, waiting to see if a crumb drops, so they can wrestle you to the ground and steal it. They aren’t the tiny, delicate roaches featured in Better Homes and Gardens; they’re the super-sized ones that grow near nuclear power plants and spread their evil spawn all over Texas.  Roach Hotels for these things would have to be the size of a Hilton. If they didn’t make me sick to look at, I could saddle one up and teach Theo to ride, and we could make some serious money.

They make my hair stand up on end, though. I can’t stand them. They horrify me and make me scream when I don’t mean to.

My hope was that this particular roach would be intelligent enough to figure out a method of escape before I got home. A don’t ask, don’t tell policy. I wouldn’t ask how he escaped or to where, and he wouldn’t have to come back and tell me. Because honestly, the thought of squishing one of these monstrous things makes me extremely queasy. It would be like stepping on a squirrel, only much, much grosser.

I peeked around the shower curtain when I got home, and at first, I didn’t see him. That’s because he’s a roach, and he has super roach powers and super roach intelligence, and he was hiding near the wall of the tub closest to me so that I couldn’t immediately detect him. Bastard.

So now I have to figure out what to do. My friend Botmo is out of town, so I don’t have to pretend to be brave; on the other hand, I can’t wuss out and ask her to handle it.  I’ve been pacing around, trying to come up with a solution. My goal is to get rid of him with as little bloodshed as possible, and without screaming. Did I mention that roaches make me scream? It’s not a regular scream either- it’s a special one, reserved for gargantuan insects, and it goes a little like this: “Eeeeeeeeee…. eeeeeeeeeeee….. eeeeeeeeeeee…..” Only louder.

Here are the solutions I’ve come up with so far:

1: Suck him up into the vacuum cleaner. This won’t work, because there’s a possibility that he’ll crawl out of the bag in the middle of the night and strangle me in my sleep.

2: Buy a shotgun and blow him to smithereens. Again, no, because I’ll have to apply for a gun license which will take a week or so, and by that time my hair will be really dirty.  Also, it could maybe damage my friend’s tub.

3: Lasso and hogtie him. This seems appropriate for Texas roaches, but it won’t work because I would possibly have to touch him, and I’d still have to figure out how to dispose of him after I caught him.  Plus, I don’t know how to lasso. Even if I did, I have no appropriate cowgirl outfit.

4: Wash him down the drain. This won’t work, because he’s too huge to fit down the holes, even though they’re quite large. Besides he’d crawl back up and jump on me while I was showering, and I’d have a heart attack and die.

5: Call 9-1-1. I think that this would be a legitimate call, but I’m afraid they’d disagree.

So, that’s all I’ve come up with. Well, actually, there’s the one that my creature-loving friend Botmo does, which involves catching him in a jar (it would have to be the size of a pickle barrel), taking him outside, and telling him that I’m sorry, but he has to go somewhere else. Catch and release.  I’m having trouble with this one, because A, I’ll have to look at him, B, I wouldn’t really be sorry, so that would be a lie, and C, he’s going to jump out of the jar and crawl on me and I’ll have a heart attack and die.

If you come up with any better (non-chemical) ideas, please, I beg of you, let me know. I’m getting itchy.