Baratas (cockroaches)

I am generally peaceful and am known to be a saver of displaced bats, spiders, minor insects. I love meeting snakes. In Texas, I danced with a rattle in Red River canyon one time.

But two-inch cockroaches I DESPISE.

For the second night in a row I opened the kitchen door at night to fetch some water only to surprise one of the big ones, good wings, tiptoeing like a ballerina, probably feeding on the bits of crumbs that are impossible to sweep from the black tile floor in my father's kitchen.

The first night it ran under the sink.

Last night I caught it in the middle of the kitchen. As I turned on the light, it stopped cold, disoriented for one second. Just enough for me to take my Havaianas sandals* into my hands and quickly beat it once, twice, three times so that it would not just pretend to be dead but be gone, splashed, guts all over, sickening, ugly, a hell of a crushed roach. (I hope not to reincarnate as one.)

As I turned to get a napking to clean the spot there it was, another one behind me, a little smaller, maybe one and half inch at the most, pretending to be nice and running like hell to a small hole between two separated tiles near the floor.

"OK. At least I got one. Need to buy roach baits. I cannot allow them to run the place." If left alone, they WILL RUN THE PLACE with their fangs.

I got the napking from inside a plastic box that once had ice cream in it: everything is put inside recycled plastic boxes and bottles at my dad's... no, the lecture about leeching chemicals would not be understood... I scooped my roach corpse and threw it in the small trash can, making sure it was really closed.

As I post this on the blog, I am sitting on the sidewalk--fortunately in the shade-- up the hill from my dad's house. Mosquitoes feast on my blood. I hope they are just the common ones, not carriers of dengue fever.

Life in the tropics can be very adventurous.

*Havaianas, or Hawaiian sandals, are a Brazilian invention now known worldwide, sold for $30 pounds this summer in England. They are dirt cheap rubber/plastic flip-flops that now come in many colors. My new ones are brown. They have tiny Brazilian flags on each side. Like the dental floss bikini style, Havaianas has become a symbol of Brazil.