Things That Go Creep In the Night (and Day)

It's that time of year when we bring out the creepy for a fun festival in the United Stated know as Halloween.  Many like to celebrate this festival by putting things out that are considered scary.  Among the accessories are large life-like versions of spiders, cockroaches, and flies.  But are these creatures really so frightening?

I must confess that since I was a child, I have had a mortal fear of cockroaches, primarily the larger varieties.  I could handle lizards, snakes, and even some spiders, but keep me away from a roach.  The triggering incident began when our family was moving into a rental home, our first home in Bakersfield, California.  We were going to bathe and stay in our home for just one night and then move items in storage from my grandparents the following day.  My mom started the bath water for my sister, Leslie and I, when out came the largest black beetle bug anyone had ever seen!  We all screamed and ran down the hall.  My Dad grabbed a newspaper, which I am sure was useless to something so huge with a thick exoskeleton.  I'm not sure if he killed it, but somehow it was gone.  Meanwhile, the water coming out of the bath faucet was rusty.  So I, the six year old, was asked to go to the other bathroom and to check the shower water. Alone.

I opened the shower door and found the shower was covered wall to wall with HUGE rust colored cockroaches, moving, crawling, and shaking their antennae at me.  AAAAAAAAAAA!!! Needless to say, we did not stay in that house that night, and did not stay there until after the house was exterminated.  However, when we moved in, I would awake in a sweat thinking cockroaches were crawling all over me. (Remember old feather pillows, not the expensive down type, but after you would move your head the feathers would adjust and make crinkling noises that sounded just like cockroach legs trip trapping close to my face).  Plus, the extermination did not obliterate the problem.

Throughout my life there were more cockroach incidences.  When I was a teen, there was a cockroach in the bathroom.  I could not bear to go in the bathroom  or even try to squash it with a newspaper.  It was just mortifying for me to look at the thing let alone  hear the crunch.  So, I convinced a much younger neighbor child to throw down the newspaper and stomp on it for me.

Then there was a home invasion by Super Cockroach when I was living in a garage apartment behind a home on Coronado Island.  I grabbed my can of Raid, and sprayed and sprayed, and told the roach "Get the f(*& out of my *&(ing apartment you bastard!!!".  (I was in the Navy at the time, so I used the language common of my culture).  I always wondered if the neighbor in the front house heard me.  He probably thought I was screaming at a man, not some relatively small insect.  After using a full can of  Black Flag or Raid, the Super Cockroach went down.  (Not sure what all that bug spray in the apartment did to me).

I even exhibited this behavior in front of my infant/toddler daughter.  Yes, one of those horrid six legged beasts had enter my space and I screamed and hit it with a shoe (no newspapers for me!!) and yelled "Die, die, die!!".  What happened later that evening was that my husband at the time was carrying our daughter, Cassidy on his shoulders.  He rushed into the room where I was and asked what was wrong with Cassidy.  He proceeded to tell me that she had hit  him with her tiny toddler hands repeatedly against his head and said, "Die, die, die!!"  I explained that she was not demon-possessed but was copying what I had done to the poor bug.  But what had I done?

I later went to a Living Consciously Seminar and one of the earliest ideas they gave us to ponder was that bugs were creatures that didn't deserve to die just because we didn't like the way they looked.  That we could consciously or verbally tell them to leave and we would never need bug service again.  I must admit I was a bit cynical.  However, I did believe that killing them was not the best way to demonstrate a loving compassion for life in front of my daughter.  So, I  told the ants to leave when we had another ant infestation and they left.

Of course even after this, a cockroach showed it's antennae to me in our home one day.  I screamed and smacked it hard.  And when it survived,  I said, "I'm sorry, I didn't meant to hurt you," and scooped it up with a paper and carried it outside. Then another time I was shocked to see a cockroach in my parents super immaculately clean home rear it's "ferocious" head at me and so I screamed.  But I stopped and apologized.  No smacking this time.  I carried it with my bare hand out through the garage and into the yard and politely asked it not to return.

Shortly after this, while still living in my parents home, some ants appeared in the side yard.  I told my father we could not leave the pesticide bait traps out when my dog was outside.  So, my Dad left the bait traps for me to put out at night when the dog was inside the garage.  I wondered if the ants would listen when I was in my parents domicile. And I proceeded to ask the ants to leave without putting out the pesticide.

A few days later my Dad told me that the ants were gone.  He asked if I used the bait traps.  I said, "No, I told the ants to go away."  I'm sure he thought I was kidding.

Happy Halloween!  And that's Penny's two cents.