Texas Tree Roach Summer

It's not just in summer that we get tree roaches in the house, but summer is when we *definitely* find these bastards have breached the perimeter.

Last night I was in the East Wing of League HQ (the room by the front door) getting Emmylou's leash set for this morning's walk, and got that always-horrible shadow in the corner of my eye - a large, dark spot on the otherwise flat-colored wall.  It was my old nemesis - the Smokybrown Cockroach, hanging where they like to - about 10 inches just below the ceiling, plastered on the wall.

They look horrendous - a sort of dark brown with a sheen.  Antennae, splayed legs and roughly the length of your palm.

They don't bite or make any chirping sounds - they're not that kind of nuisance.  And they're not the kind of roach that "if you see one, it means there's a hundred more you haven't seen".  It just means there's a single ding-dong roach that has wandered somehow into your house.  Maybe under a door, through a vent...  I suspect that's how we get them.  Every once in a while I wonder if they popped up through the toilet (more on that in a second).

It's not a sign your house is dirty if you have a tree roach, as we call them in Austin.  It's a sign you live around trees.  Which we all do.  I am not even clear what they eat - But...  Maybe a few years ago, during the Andre era, I was up after Jamie went to bed and heard a peculiar sound from the kitchen.  Andre was mostly deaf so he didn't hear it, and he often missed fallen food in the kitchen (which Lucy would never), and I went to check out the odd sound.  It was a tree roach happily eating a fallen tortilla chip.  Crunching so loud I heard it in the otherwise quiet house. 

And I get it.  I love HEB chips, too.  But I killed that snack-loving fucker immediately.

You cannot ignore them.  This is not a tiny spider - something I'll catch and release or even leave in place if it's catching some other bugs.  These are big, fast animals that are just going to lead to chaos at some point when they show up in your bath towel (twice) or run out from under your bag when you pick it up off the floor.  Or - as has happened to me - you realize one has crawled into bed with you.  

They are agents of chaos, and your lizard brain knows the only way to deal with it is to eliminate it at all costs.  And because they're so impossible to otherwise wrangle - we have to go the full poisoning route.

"Hard to catch?" you say.  And I say:  The Smokybrown Cockroach is almost two inches long, and the real problem is - they don't often do it, but they *can* fly.  They have wings.  I've only seen them fly a few times, but they sure can.

I did not know this as a youth until, one day before the start of the day in high school, a tree roach was escaping a teacher's loafer on the hallway floor and alighted, hurling directly into my chest.  That shit sticks with you.  

So,when you go to kill them - and I do kill them - you need to do it fast and from a distance.  As a shoe-armed human, you are not killing that thing with your slow-ass reflexes and the thing's ability to maneuver.  

Sure, I know so many of you will become mad that I use Raid that I can spray from as far away as fifteen feet.  Chemicals bad.  Boo.  But I am not trusting something brewed out of cabbage to lightly annoy these fuckers who have been with us since A fish crawled out of the sea and walked around.  I want their gelatin hydraulic systems to consume themselves.  Make their painful death a warning to other roaches.

Anyway, per the roach in my living room, I blasted the fucker from at least ten feet away, and as they always do, it managed to fall and disappear.  I'll find the hollowed out carapace in ten years when I move some furniture.

Satisfied, I put away the Raid and went to deal with the fact I'd had 40 oz of water since dinner, and what was sitting on the floor in front of the toilet?  This was all of 60 seconds later.

Remember when I said "I wonder if they come up through the plumbing?"  I do.  Because they're always in the damn bathroom.  I keep a can of Raid under my sink in our main bathroom because about every five months I walk into the bathroom at night to get ready for bed, and there's one of the shitheels hanging on the wall over the shower.  

It's probably the vents, but maybe not.  Drains.  Toilets.  I have no idea.

Anyway, I was just mad at this secondary roach, and went and blasted it and - in a frenzy, ran around and looked for more roaches.  But no dice.  I got the two I could find.  Yes, I know there will be more.

But I imagine for folks who didn't live here in Texas for years and years, seeing your first huge tree roach is upsetting.  But it's really just part of life here - and when you know it's not part of a huge army of them living in your pantry, it's not that bad.

I see them all the time if I walk the dog when it's dark out, morning or night.  You just step over them as they cross your path, going about their roach business.  You could step on them, but because of the chaos factor, it's best to just leave them alone.  

But, I also know we're in the part of the year where there's a 30% chance one will run out of the trash barrel when I open it to throw out the garbage.