They Fly!

No account of life in the tropics would be complete without exaggerated stories of oversized roaches. I came fully expecting to find these giant creatures crawling all over the place. To my surprise, the garden-variety roach here isn’t much bigger than some of the bugs we have in DC and they don’t seem to multiply as fast. What I wasn’t prepared for was their bizarre self-destructive behavior.

My first week here, I woke up in the middle of the night to find a cockroach crawling on my arm. Why? Why is this cockroach crawling on my arm? Does it think I’m food? Is it looking for a little warmth? These questions kept me up the rest of the night. I’ve since come to the conclusion that they simply don’t have a natural fear of people: they fall on top of me when I come in the door, they flutter around cars while I’m driving, they fly into me while I’m sleeping, they try to lay eggs into my carefully folded slacks (the ones I wear every week). The roaches I’ve known in northern climates are masters of the escape. The roaches here, instead of running away when they are surprised, will come running at you, presumably seeking a hiding place under your foot. They seem to be controlled primarily by their appetites, rather than any sense of survival. Leave a partially empty glass of juice standing on the table, and you’re bound to find the next day a roach that has downed itself in an overnight feeding frenzy. I once found a roach that had managed to squeeze its way into an empty beer bottle. Fortunately, weekly spraying of my apartment seems to keep them away, so incidents have diminished. Still, you never know……