La Cucaracha

"Hey, something just fell down over there. What was that?"

The most extraordinary stories generally begin with something equally as ordinary as my roommate, E's question.

Upon her detailed inspection we quickly discovered that "thing" was a cockroach.

I shudder even typing the word.

We screamed as if masked intruders had carving knives to our throats. E quickly threw a bowl over it, assumed she missed, and then threw another. We continued to scream. We screamed loud and long, unwavering in our terror until neighbors from all sides began violently pounding on the walls. We composed ourselves enough to discuss how our neighbors certainly wouldn't be helpful in the event that masked intruders really did have carving knives to our throats. Then we remembered the vile prehistoric creep that was under one of two bowls. We couldn't just leave him trapped there. What if he got out and crawled into our rooms!? Our beds!?? However irrational, the thought was horrifying.

We called the boyfriends. Not pleased with their unsympathetic responses ("it's just a bug...kill it. You guys really need to calm down. Are you - is that screaming?") we called the Dads. A bit more understanding but with the same bottom line, Dad reminded me about the roach killing powder we had in the closet. We were now armed and dangerous -if only to ourselves.

Still atop chairs, we strategized. E would flip the bowls. and I would squirt the sucker with my nifty powder. The only snag in our plan was the prospect of actually having to touch a bowl the cockroach was in. So, we did what any self-respecting, mature, professional 22 year-olds would do.

We took a few shots.

Feeling a bit more courageous, we got back on the chairs. (Yes, we were still on chairs, I said a *bit* more courageous, we weren't god-damned superheroes). E palmed the bowl and with a bit of a whimper flipped it over. Nothing. Feeling more prepared, we deduced it must be in the second bowl. Before flipping the second, E had a stroke of alcohol-induced brilliance and proposed that we slide the bowl onto a magazine and carefully then slide the bowl and its inhabitant into the toilet. We did just that and to our horror, discovered nothing under the second bowl either.

Great. Not only is this disgusting thing still alive, but now we don't even know where it is.

We had hunch it was probably under the radiator. I took a shirt and wound it up boys-locker room style, and took a few shots at the radiator. Armed with a flashlight, E shined it underneath hoping to scare our friend out. Just when it was starting to look hopeless, she saw it. I doused it in powder as E ran to get a glass bowl this time, so we could be certain of our capture. She grabbed a measuring cup and set it over the mound of powder that had formed. Proud of our success, we retreated to the kitchen to both lower our heart-rates before the next phase and have a celebratory shot.

Upon our return, we both stared at the bowl in silence. E finally verbalized what we were both thinking. "He's not in there, is he?" And he wasn't. The disgusting monster had effectively outsmarted two college graduates and crawled out through the spout in the measuring cup. Luckily, wounded from my aerial powder attack, he hadn't gotten far. With wrecked nerves, exhausted by the events of the past 45 minutes, and as courageous as our BAC's would allow, we scooped the cockroach into a plastic cup, sprinted to the bathroom, and flushed him away. And then flushed once more, just to be sure.

The room was a disaster. The chairs were thrown, bowls, measuring cups and plastic cups covered the floor. Around the radiator was a layer of the blue powder a few inches deep. It looked like we killed a Smurf.

We did some damage control and headed to bed feeling pretty accomplished. It was the cheapest drinking night we'd had since moving to NYC.