Grandma Henke

Some big ugly creatures have moved into my shrubs by the front door and I am ready to pull the shrubs out for good … seriously I think I will do it by hand if I have to.

They look like big cock roaches but I hear they are water beetles … I know they aren’t beetles but that is their name anyway. They hover around our front door at night and our small TV/computer room is just off the front door. Twice now in the past two weeks I have jumped four feet off the sofa from a sitting position when one has slipped in through the front door somehow with the intent of eating alive. It happens late at night, like now, when I have my quiet alone time as everyone else in the house snores. I can’t even scream or yell Hiee-Yaaw as I strike, for fear of waking someone up. It takes every once of courage I have to pick up my shoe and repeatedly slam the grotesque thing to smithereens. I have to do it without screaming. After reading up on them online there is no way I can just scoot it out the front door to live out its life in my shrubs. It makes me shudder to even think about it the whole ugly scene, so you can imagine the convulsions I go into once it is done.

I was doing okay until I went to this site and read some of the facts on cockroaches.

1. Cockroaches can live for a week without their head. What kills them is their inability to drink water since they can live without food for a month.

2. Some varieties of female cockroach only need to mate once in order to continue to reproduce for the rest of their lives (their life span being about a year.)

3. Cockroaches can hold their breath for 40 minutes!

Now I am totally grossed out and imagining thousands of fertile females having ladies night out in my shrubs. Can you imagine being pregnant over and over and over no matter how careful you were … It’s obvious they need some teenage pregnancy classes because once pregnant you are doomed for the rest of your life. And holding their breath for 40 minutes? Is that so they can run in and out grabbing food and not get caught by the bug spray? So you smash them to heck and they can still live for a week even without their heads? This is war!

Here’s some other facts: The world’s largest cockroach is in South America … la cuckaracha … that’s way too close for my liking. They can be 6 inches long with a wing span of one foot. Cockroaches will eat almost anything: left-overs, paper, wood, leather, cigarette butts, tooth paste, coffee grinds, glue, soap, feces, fabric, shoes, paint, glue on wallpaper, human hair, fingernails …

I can’t write about this anymore. I’m getting the heevy jeevies., I’m pulling out the shrubs and calling the exterminator!