visitors in the night

The other night, I'm entrenched in New Moon. Adam is playing Atari. Yes, you read that right. Atari. I glance up long enough to check out his game and I notice a slight movement along our crown molding. My eyes move back to the book and quickly dart back to the crown molding in horror as I see the dreaded "WATERBUG" (also known as the Palmetto Bug). But whoever called this bug a WATERBUG in the first place a) has no understanding of water or b) was seriously hallucinating . This mess is a gigantic ROACH. Huge. Easily an inch and a half long. Easily.

These bugs are what I would call a superbug. They have supernatural power. They are superstealth, possessing the ability to appear out of NOWHERE, catching one completely off guard. They also have the power to evoke from whoever is lucky enough to discover them, a scream so bloodcurdling it could raise the dead.

As soon as I laid eyes on this "thing", my muscles locked. I was frozen. I lacked all power of pest-control. Mr. Baseball followed my gaze to the "thing" on our wall and made his move to dispatch of it quickly. He emerged from the bathroom with a plastic bag.

I immediately noticed his weapon of choice being vastly different from the usual plastic cup. I frowned at him and asked, "What do you plan to do with that?"

He proceeds to close in on the waterbug, but as soon as the plastic crinkled that bug took off. Oh, I don't mean he scurried along the molding. Oh no. That would have been acceptable, even normal for a large bug, but no...

this bug FLEW!!!

Yes, he flew off the wall toward the bed. I was numb with panic. As he disappeared from my line of vision momentarily, I contemplated my next move. I would have gone straight to the couch for the night, knowing that there was a giant FLYING roach in my bed. As I gathered myself, I realized that Mr. Baseball had found the bug again crawling along the floor. He attempted three more times to trap the bug with the plastic bag, finally catching him along the floor, amputating one of the bug's legs on the way.

I relaxed, quickly sinking back into New Moon...until I had to go to the bathroom. Agh!

As I rounded the corner into the bathroom I saw this...



I give you the Camel Cricket. I truly don't know which is worse, waterbug or camel cricket. I think they tie for the world's nastiest of nasties. In my bugged-out opinion, the Camel Cricket is also a superbug. Not only is it hideously ugly, but it also appears out of nowhere and this mother can JUMP like nobody's bid'ness. The bigger they are the higher they jump.

As soon as I saw it sitting down by the baseboard, I called for pest-control in the form of Mr. Baseball. If he had not been here, I could have killed these two critters myself, but why waste a perfectly good bug killer when he's available? Mr. Baseball went a different route this time, grabbing up several lengths of toilet paper and going in for the kill. We did spare the Camel Cricket the misery of going to the landfill and gave him a proper burial at sea instead.


And all you Twilight fans will be pleased to know that nothing kept me from New Moon and I finished it that night, superbugs and all.