ShavinA couple of weeks ago I came home from a lovely night out, tired, happy and ready for bed. I dared to think it might be one of those rare, cherished nights that would pass in delightful oblivion, which is to say that I would sleep, all the way through, until morning.
I took a hefty dose of melatonin and put the dogs in bed. Just as I was about to climb in after them, I heard it. And I knew sleep was just a dream.
“It” was a chihuahua-sized flying cockroach. It was clinging to the molding around my husband’s closet, making a noise so far below the human hearing register I can only assume some pre-evolutionary part of my brain was awakened, causing my head to ricochet around and my eyes to lock onto it. The roach fluttered its wings. I shuddered. It chattered. I tiptoed to my closet and got a shoe. I swung. I missed. It flew off the wall and dove under the bedside table.
I hate roaches, as does everyone I know who is not an entomologist. A little research turns up the fact that tens of millions of people have something called katsaridaphobia – intense fear of cockroaches. Entomologist Richard Kaae even suggests that cockroaches are the most feared of all insects.
Our fear goes back to ancient Egyptian times, when “spells” against cockroaches were the Raid of the moment. Documentary producer Emily Driscoll says she once became trapped in a hotel room in India because a roach was sitting on the door handle. A computer programmer in New Orleans reportedly paid his roommate $10 to “take care of” a cockroach in the bathroom, later saying this was “possibly the most emasculating thing” he’d ever revealed.