The sounds roaches make in real life: “...”
The sounds roaches make in movies: “Skritchezzechezz...clickity, clicklity.”
The sound I heard when I saw this roach: “SKRITCHEZZECHEZZ…CLICKITY, CLICKLITY. I’M GOING TO KILL Y’ALL!!!!! BWAAAHAAAHAAAA!”
When I saw the roach skitter across the floor, my mouth opened before I could groom what was going to come out. “Oh, look. They have a cat.” Though the roach was only a couple inches long, it was the biggest roach I had ever seen, and hope to ever see. “I guess it’s not a cat…”
The restaurant was of the western theme variety. The quality of the food was what you would expect from a place that lures in Middle America with kitsch. Though the roach was unwelcomed, it was not entirely unexpected.
There were looks of abject terror on the faces of some of the other diners when I rudely informed them they were sharing their space with a large bug that my laughs-before-propriety tendency announced as a cat. The bug was on the floor and it didn’t seem too distressed by being discovered.
She was young and in a pink gown. She rose from her table, strode across the room with purpose, and with a single stab nailed the roach with the heel of her shoe. Since the heel was as pointed as a pencil, I was impressed—and perhaps a little aroused. I had visions of Zena Warrior Princess in my head and a whole arsenal of commentary about her saving us from the filthy creature was loaded and ready to go. This time I decided to stand down before firing off my comments. I hesitated to stomp on it myself due to my girlish fear of it going up my pant leg in a desperate attempt to flee my manly size-13s. This young woman had hiked up her gown like she was about to ford a stream—giving the bug no shade, and stomped it with enough force to kick-start a Harley with fouled plugs. She didn’t even wipe off her heel—she just fluffed up her gown and smiled at the room with a combination of childish “Oops” and an adult “So there.”
Fortunately we had finished the unremarkable meal before the sighting so there was no need to force down food sprinkled with suspicion. I did spend the next few hours fearful of every gastro-intestinal fluctuation—hoping it was not foreshadowing a pyrotechnic night reading and rereading the shampoo label in the motel bathroom.
Our reaction to bugs is as primitive as the bug itself. Some evolutionary prerogative tells us we do not want to hang out with them. This one seemed to know it. This one was so arrogant; it cost it its life. Stupidly, it walked out onto the floor of a crowded room like a boss, unimpressed by the humans trying to eat bad food they paid too much for. I lucked out that nothing came of eating food from a building that housed large cockroaches. Though luck ran out that night for an overly confident bug on the business end of fashionable, sexy heel. I’m sure there is a story about why she sprang to splat the bug with no ceremony, but you don’t ask questions like that of a lady who can wield a black stiletto heel so dangerously.
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