Ew

I have never really been the type of girl who needed my guy to kill bugs for me, but if he's around I always appreciate his assistance with such matters. Rob and my Dad might disagree with me, saying the screeching sound I make when dealing with bugs proves I need help. But ask Lisa who took care of the spiders in the Cape house this summer...not her! Anyway, I never really needed a guy to kill the bugs for me until we moved to the South...the home of the palmetto bug.

In case you haven't spent much time in the South, I should tell you that a palmetto bug is just a cute way of saying cockroach. They are large, disgusting, and one of the fastest running insects around, which I found out the hard way. One night last week I was watching TV when I saw a baby palmetto bug crawling up the living room wall from behind the TV. Rob had already gone to bed, so I grabbed a chair and paper towel from the kitchen and squished the little sucker. No problem.

Fast forward to the following night. Rob was already sleeping (note: I have and always will be the night owl of the house, and Rob is the opposite), when I walked into our sink/closet area to get ready for bed. Before I even turned on the light, I saw a rather large dark spot on the carpet near the door that connects the bedroom and sink/closet area. No way I thought. I turned on the light and yes way. It was a huge palmetto bug. I grabbed some tissues and it was already half way up the wall. I shrieked a little, tried to squish the bug, but all I really ended up doing was brushing him onto the floor. He was just too big, I could not bring myself to squish something that big. So I went into the bedroom and stood at the foot of the bed saying Rob's name over and over, a little louder each time, until finally he got up and I told him he needed to kill a bug for me. He was still half asleep but said something along the lines of, 'a bug? right now? are you serious?' By the time he walked into the sink/closet area, the thing had run across the floor and hid somewhere back behind Rob's safe in the closet. Rob went back to bed, and I stayed in that closet for a good 15 minutes trying to find it, with no luck. I did not sleep well that night.

The next day I was walking on egg shells throughout the apartment, convinced it was going to show up at one point or another. But I never saw it. Rob tried to convince me that it could have been anywhere by then- back outside, under the carpet, down the drain, in another apartment, etc. I almost believed him, until last night. I was filling out a survey online for a job application I was filling out and decided to take my laptop into the bedroom where I could concentrate better. As soon as I sat on the bed, I jumped up and ran back to the living room to tell Rob the bug was back and crawling up our bedroom wall! I thank God for Rob, my palmetto bug killer, and for being able to sleep better at night...until the next one shows up.