Tales of boys and bugs, part 2

About a year after the hissing palmetto-that-wouldn't-die incident, we found ourselves living in Columbia, SC. Now, for those of you who have never been there, it's hot. I mean HOT. Beastly, disgustingly hot. And humid. As many of you know, this combo of exceptional heat and moisture makes for ideal breeding conditions for bugs. And this is certainly true when it comes to the afore-mentioned roach (or palmetto bugs).

We were living in a brand new, 3rd floor apartment in a newly developed area of town. One would think that there would not be a bug problem in this apartment, seeing as no one had lived there previously. We thought wrong.

Now, our bedroom was small (as many apartments are), so the distance from the corner of the bed to the bathroom door was barely 6 feet. A few shuffles along the wall, and you can easily make your way from the bed into the bathroom in your sleep, without turning on any lights. So late one night, Matt gets out of bed to use the bathroom. I barely noticed as he got out of bed, and rolled over to go back to sleep. Seconds later I hear a blood-curdling scream. Really! Loud! Piercing! Bad! I am up like a shot just as he turned on the bathroom light, and I see him LAUNCH himself into the air, clearing the distance between the bathroom and the bed without ever touching the floor.

He yells to me, "Get it! GET IT!" Confused, and still half-asleep, I mutter, "Get what?" He motions (as before) to the bathroom. Seeing that he's not bleeding, and there's no boogey-man hiding in my bathroom, I'm feeling no sense of urgency. But he won't let it rest (nor will he let ME rest). He pesters me, until I finally get up to see what horrors there were to behold in my little bathroom. There, on the floor, lay a palmetto bug. It could easily have been the twin of the one we encountered the previous year, back in Atlanta. It was huge. However, it differed from it's Georgia cousin in that it was not hissing or flying. I suppose that was due to the fact that it was squished dead upon the white tile.

It was all I could do to keep from laughing at the idea of Matt stepping onto the cool white tile, only to have the Beast get squished between his toes. Sure, had it been me, I'd have reacted in exactly the same way, but since it wasn't me, I found great humor in the whole thing. That is until I was assigned the task of cleaning up the carcass, as well as disinfecting his foot (you'd have thought he stepped in muradic acid or something, holding his foot as far away from his body as possible, as if it were going to start bubbling, and the flesh were about to fall off the bone).

I still giggle to this day each time I think of that night.....