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Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Elevator Cockroach

Playgroup was at Melissa's house today since Lydia couldn't let us into Maadi House and Melissa's apartment has a little playground in the back. Lora and I walked over together and once we got there we sat and chatted while our kids beat each other up a bit.

Rachel won't let Finn crawl anywhere--she pushes down on him until he can't move anymore. Finn then feels like he needs to push on Abby a little bit so that she knows how it feels. And thus the pecking order goes. It would probably go further but there's no one smaller than Abby yet and she can't really move around too well.

When the kids (ie., Rachel) seemed to be getting a little too restless to stay indoors we decided to head out to the playground. We gathered up the kids and all the necessary hud and walked out to the elevator.

After I'd opened up the outside door, I pushed the inside doors open and started to walk inside. That's when my well-attuned cockroach sensors spotted a gigantic cockroach. It was probably at least as long as my index finger and, as per the cockroach usual, sickeningly gross-looking.

"Ew, there's a cockroach in here," I said as I stepped inside.

Lora and Melissa peeked in to look and decided that we could all still fit inside the elevator and avoid the cockroach. Fitting three women and three babies in an elevator here is tricky under the best of circumstances--the elevators are teeny tiny--but we'd fit that many people in before so we knew it could be done. We just weren't banking on having a cockroach running around our besandaled feet.

All of us were watching the ugly thing, trying to anticipate its next move, as the elevator started its descent. We'd huddle together in one corner of the elevator and then the cockroach would charge at us and we'd scamper around to avoid touching it/having it touch us.

"Hey, it's coming toward your foot," one of us would warn another.

That one would shriek and jump out of the way and we'd barely have time to readjust ourselves before it happened again.

"There it is!"

*Shriek!* (scamper.)

"Where is it?"

*Shriek!* (scamper.)

By the time we'd reached the ground floor Melissa, Lora, and I were laughing so hard we could hardly control ourselves. Finn, Abby, and Rachel didn't find it so funny. Finn was screaming his head off and Abby just looked confused. Rachel understood was going on better than the other two--she doesn't even like it when ants encroach on her play space (unless we play the "Let's smash them!" game) so seeing this huge cockroach kind of scared her--and she was screaming along with us whenever the cockroach charged.

We used a different elevator to go back upstairs and there were no cockroaches. Rachel was still nervous about it, though. I'm not sure elevators will ever be the same for her.

8 comments:

  1. I'm so glad you didn't take a picture of the cockroach... I don't think I would have been able to read this, all though it was funny, and even funnier that Rachel was right along with you guys!

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  2. There is no way I would have gotten in that elevator. You're braver than I am!

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  3. We just had a conversation about this in our kitchen.

    Andrew: You just got on the elevator with the cockroach? You didn't kill it? Or use another elevator?

    Me: No. The thing was huge! It was like as long as my finger and big and juicy...how would we kill it?

    Andrew: Step on it.

    Me: Gross!

    Andrew: The one in the bedroom was about that big and I killed it...

    Me: So?

    Andrew: So.

    Me: It took you like 10 minutes and you were, like, moving furniture and throwing things.

    Andrew: Good point.

    Yeah, besides that...stepping on it would have been like stepping on a mouse. Can you imagine the crunchy squishiness? No. I don't think we could have killed it.

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  4. Lat night I heard a lot of banging downstairs, and went to see if Josie was alright--she was, but a spider or two had met their fate. :o)

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  5. The way to kill cockroaches, or at least to knock them out temporarily, is to kick them hard against a wall. They get rattled and don't move again for several minutes and there is no mess. If you're really resourceful and the room is fairly inflammable, it also is an opportune time to finish it off with a can of Raid and a match. This technique is even more fun before you kick it and they are running or jump and you catch them mid-stride with a big ball of flame.....

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  6. Haha. I was also going to ask why you all didn't just step on it, but the recorded conversation with Andrew answered that question!

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  7. EEEWWWW! I've never seen a roach that big, and I hopefully never will. I definitely couldn't have gotten in that elevator!

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  8. Welcome to the real world. When I was in N.C. in the barracks we had roaches that big. The joke was to new comers was to tie them to your boots and train them to take you to the bathroom in the middle of the night. If you can catch them they make a good replacement for a ball if you had a bat or stick, you could always get on base because after you hit it nobody wanted to catch it. DAD

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