We went to bed last night at 10, and I fell asleep around 10:30, while the hubs stayed up watching TV. About 11:30 at night, I woke up because I could feel something crawling on my head. I reached up there, and it crawled over my fingers. I let loose a blood-curdling scream, and sat up. The hubs looked over at me, and by the light of the TV, he could see it crawling down my hair and onto my shirt. He screamed too, and then told me to get up, out of bed and take off my shirt. I immediately did, all the while screaming. I turned on the lights, and we couldn’t find it – we looked in my shirt on the floor, and there was nothing. Finally he started going through the bed, and there it was. Running across my lovely white sheets was a 3-fucking-inch cockroach! I ran to the kitchen to grab a roll of paper towels, but in the meantime the fucker was running fast to the bathroom so the hubs grabbed my shirt and grabbed the roach. He didn’t know what to do with it, so he just threw the shirt and the roach into the backyard and shut the door! He told me later I can go get my shirt, wash it and wear it again – yeah, I’m good – don’t need that shirt. It’s going in the trash, if I ever have the nerve to go get it. Getting to sleep again – in my bed! – trying to calm down – was miserable. We left the light on for a couple hours, making sure his buddies wouldn’t come back out, but I couldn’t sleep so I finally turned off the light.
I fucking hate cockroaches. I grew up in the lovely mountains of Colorado – it was too cold for those fuckers! (I usually don’t cuss this much, I apologize for my language, but I had a fucking cockroach crawling on my head last night! I think I’m allowed a few f-bombs.) When we moved to Texas, I knew that we would probably encounter some bugs, but a fucking cockroach on my head while sleeping??? When we saw the lovely lot of our house, and how it backed right up to the forest, and how even part of the forest is in our yard, which is so nice for our dogs, I thought it was great. I didn’t think about the fucking tree roaches that lived in the forest and would get in our house! We’ve lived in the house for over three years, and haven’t had huge problems – just a dead roach here or there occasionally. BUT – we have always had the house sprayed for bugs every three months. Just like all my neighbors and friends here in Texas, we have someone come to our house and spray pesticide all over our house – both inside and out.
I’ve recently done some research, and I don’t remember all the details (don’t really want to do more research – trying to stick my head in the sand a bit today), but as you can imagine, pesticides are not good – for you, for your children, for your unborn babies. The hubs and I had talked, and I told him I didn’t want the guy to come out anymore now that I’m pregnant, he said why not just spray the outside, and not the inside, and so we agreed - generally. The bug guy is scheduled to come out THIS WEEK! He’s such a good sales guy, he calls every three months, and comes out the next day. So I know he’s going to call me today or tomorrow. What am I going to tell him when he calls?
Last night after the big cockroach debacle, the hubs kept saying, you want to cut back on spraying? Seriously? I know it’s been three months since the last spraying, which happened inside as well, but we just went through winter when the activity is supposed to be low. Now that the temps are rising into the 80’s, and it’s going to be 90’s very soon, the problem is only going to get worse! I can’t fucking live with cockroaches in my bed! I looked online, and one of the suggestions was to get a gecko or two to live free-range in the house. I sent the suggestion to the hubs, and he just ignored me. I can’t imagine why he doesn’t want that! And that should be fun with my two dogs – they love to bark at lizards outside and try to kill them. That would be fun inside the house…
I don’t know what to do – I’m going to ask the bug guy about less toxic measures. And I’m trying to pretend that a fucking cockroach didn’t wake me up last night by wandering over my head! I know I should be as safe as possible with this baby, but there was a fucking cockroach on my head!!! And lots of people in Texas and in the south use pesticides all the time – right?
But the big thing is that the next time the hubs brings up moving back to Colorado, I may just have to say yes… Especially if another fucking 3-inch cockroach walks on me again!
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You are definitely allowed some f-bombs. I have the heebie jeebies just reading your post!
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment and support on my blog. I really appreciate that. I don't have any questions right now, but if I do, I'll let you know.
hahaha - I'm sorry I'm laughing. I LOVE the f-bombs! And yes, I would be screaming, throwing shit, out of my mind crazy-mad too! I probably would have made my husband strip the whole room down, vacuum 12 times and wash all clothes and bedding before returning to bed. lol. Not cool.
ReplyDeleteOMG, that is about the worst thing I can think of right now. I woke up a few nights ago because of a nightmare of a roach on my head. I was screaming and crying and it took me hours to calm down enough to go back to sleep, so you are not only allowed F bombs, but you do whatever you need to do. I'm pregnant too (a bit farther along), but I had my husband spray the next day. My stress level needs to be low for the baby, and I couldnt relax.
ReplyDeleteUGH!!!! How disgusting!!! I would have flipped the F out. In my first college apartment we had these giant "water bugs" that looked like roaches. I would cry hysterically whenever I saw them.
ReplyDeleteHow gross! I am so sorry! Ugghhhh....good luck with the bug guy!
ReplyDeleteMaybe you just need to get a BIGGER lizard-- one that can hold it's own against the dogs! A monitor perhaps :)
ReplyDeleteCockroaches are the worst. I spent a summer in New Orleans when I was in college-- we had an old hairbrush that we used to whack cockroaches in the bathroom when we got up in the night to pee. Needless to say, it was utterly disgusting. Never had one on my head, though (that I know of-- I was drinking quite a bit back then, soooo... who knows). It sounds totally traumatizing. I hope you can find a solution!
Oh how I do NOT miss those Texas roaches. I have many nighttime horror stories as well. And they fly. I know they live outside in the trees, especially loving ivy, and come in to find food, everything from food in the trash, slime in the garbage disposal to soap scum in the shower. Most people I knew did not spray pesticides, the roaches are just something Texans live with, yuck! We tried to be very clean, but even then...
ReplyDeleteEww! That would probably give me a heart attack!!
ReplyDeleteWhere I worked when pregnant got sprayed, inside and out, every 3m. When I told the guy I was pregnant, he told me to leave the site and that he would open all the windows, etc. When I came back, I couldnt even smell the after fumes. Perhaps that is an option?
ReplyDeleteWhen we first moved to Nashville in 2007, we chose an apartment complex without looking at the apartment first. (My fault. I got the job, and we had to be up there three weeks later.)
ReplyDeleteThe first few weeks were fine. Then, about a month in, we started seeing these weird bugs on the wall when we woke up in the morning. It took some good Googling skills, but we finally figured out they were house centipedes (look them up... nasty things!). Turns out, our apartment was INFESTED. They were living in the walls and coming into the house through the vent over top of our bed. No joke. Long story short, after one fell onto Joey's head while we were sleeping one night, we started spraying them with raid, collecting them in plastic bags, and bringing them to the front office in the morning. It took them 3 days of dead bugs in bags to agree to let us out of our lease.
I've never been so happy to move in my entire life. I couldn't sleep for months. It was straight out of a horror movie.
How horriable - I can't imagine. I would see what the bug guys suggests. You need to do something!
ReplyDeleteAahhhgghhh still shivering here!! I hate those things too, we don't have them in Irleland at all, in fact we have almost no insects to speak of, but in Italy youzaaa they creep me out, all kind of insects really, specially those that jump and crawl. Ask for less toxic things, but I thought the geckos were a great suggestion!
ReplyDeleteOh I meant to say, not really watching telly at all, mainly online stuff!
Love, Fran
Try diatomaceous earth! It's an organic solution for cockroaches :). We used it when we had a bedbug scare a while ago (thankfully, there were none - it was just some freaky looking poison ivy), and it is perfectly safe in the house (and outside, I think).
ReplyDeleteWe bought ours at our local natural foods store - it's a white powder.
I am originally from Louisiana (now in MD) and roaches are my least favorite things ON EARTH. We have the same, giant gross ones that fly in through the doors and live in trees. NASTY. I can't sleep just knowing one is in the house, but luckily we don't see them here in MD.
That was alway my worst fear when I lived in Manhattan. Now it's bats. My friends have woke up twice in the middle of the night because a bat was swooping over there heads!
ReplyDeleteOMG. That's awful. I guess I will stop complaining about the cold weather here after that. Good luk with the bug guy. I would want to be as safe as possible too but having a cockroach crawl on you while you are sleeping is way to stressful. I would have dropped a few f bombs myself!
ReplyDeleteewwwwwww!!!! that gives me the heebie jeebies just reading about it! Eeeeeek!
ReplyDeleteI've been a northerner all my life so I've luckily never had an experience w/ a cockroach - I hope you find some effective but safe pesticides to use soon.
Yuuuuuuuck! I'm so sorry. Yuck. Yuck again. One of our cats is a pretty good hunter; how would the dogs feel about a kitty in their midst?
ReplyDeleteI would still be in sedation from the trauma. You are one brave lady. I'm not an organic/green/healthy-type person at all, but we live in a century-old rental and it's not practical for us to get exterminators all the time and not possible to exclude all visitors from our home (without spending money on structural changes to a house we don't own). So I have done some research of my own into getting rid of the odd visiting creature. Both boric acid (super cheap, and you can buy it at the Home Depot) and diatomaceous earth will kill insects that walk through them, and neither is toxic to humans (you shouldn't eat them, but low-dose exposure or ingestion is harmless, unlike, say, rat poison, which is dangerous even in tiny doses). I've successfully used boric acid to kill a number of things (including fleas - we don't have pets, I don't know either, but it killed them all in 24 hours). Another thing I read is that catnip repels roaches. I haven't had a substantial opportunity to test this, but I did hang catnip sachets in the kitchen and bathroom and brew some catnip "tea" (leaves and boiling water) and spray it on the counter a few times. That's totally safe to ingest, so you don't even have to wipe it off. Catnip is also cheap, so if you're going to undertake a full-on, multilateral assault, might as well include that. I always feel better about exclusion than extermination - not because I'm tender-hearted, but because I don't want to see them, dead or alive.
ReplyDeleteEW EW EW EW EW! Blah. I had this happen to me once in a fairly nice hotel and I couldn't sleep/ function either, so I completely understand. I like the Gecko idea.
ReplyDeleteI love f bombs. Keep em coming.
Ick!!!! We have wood roaches here too, so I can imagine how disturbing that must have been.
ReplyDeleteOh, that creeps me out something fierce! EEEEK! Hopefully you get that all figured out soon!
ReplyDeleteI deal with those fuckers all the time in Louisiana. They aren't technically cockroaches like the dirty little brown ones. They are actually bugs and nothing kills them, not even a shoe. I swear I have had to beat a few with a shoe five or six times before it was even stunned.
ReplyDeleteBest thing to do it put sticky traps around the house, boric acid powder, and close up any holes. Oh, the palmetto bug (aka 3 inch cockroach) eats the misc. crap from the floor: sloughed skin and hair. I sweep like a crazy person all the time.
I had several crawling on me often, and it never gets easier. blah!!
I know I'm not supposed to: but I was laughing all the way through this. So sorry that happened to you, but your tail of it was just hilarious!!
ReplyDeleteYUCK!!!!!!!!!! I would have flipped the hell out. Yes, f-bombs are appropriate in this case. Where do you live?
ReplyDeleteCreepy! When I lived in Phoenix we had scorpions, but I do think a cockroach is waaaay more gross! Good luck!
ReplyDeleteOh that sounds horrible. My husband and I had a battle with a bionic cockroach in South Africa. They suck!
ReplyDeleteEwwww!! Just major ewwwwwww!!!!
ReplyDeleteYikes! That sounds awful. My BFF had a similar thing happen with a bat! *shiver*
ReplyDeleteDo you think it was a palmetto bug? We have those here in FL and they are ginormous. They live outside though (they aren't like regular cockroaches) and we only see them if one happens to fly into the house. If it really was 3 inches, I doubt a gecko would be able to take it on--at least not the little geckos we have around here. Maybe get a cat though. Ours takes care of palmetto bugs lickety split. Eve. Our bad cat is good for a few things. ;-)
Hang in there!
I would have packed my bags and been on a plane out of there last night so you handled it better than I. Ickkkkk. My skin is crawling right now.
ReplyDeleteCoincidentally, I happened to catch an episode of Billy the Exterminator where he had to get rid of a huge infestation of cockroaches. He vacuumed up all the bodies and then put Combat Roach paste every few inches or so around any crevices, places of heat, baseboards, etc. He said they'll drag that back to the hive and kill the infestation where it starts.
These things are absolutley disgusting. Yuck, you poor thing!! What we did was use one of those bombs you can purchase one time when I was away for a bit. I think spraying the outside is a good idea but if it is going to make you more anxious then you can get masses of cockroach traps and put them in the likeliest places they'd be?? Anyway good luck with it no matter what you choose-big ick!!
ReplyDeleteewww ewww ewwwwwwwwwwwww. move. move now... move to alaska. omg that is so gross. I had something like that happen to me in college, and when I told the housing people, they were like that happens all the time, its no big deal. Seriously, how can people be okay with BUGS crawling on them. EWWWWWW. I would have the spray the hell out of your house outside and then burn down the forest.
ReplyDeleteOh my gosh....I am itchy everywhere right now! I hate bugs and HATE them touching me!!!! I think spraying outside is a good idea and a safe alternative to spray in the home. EWWW!!!
ReplyDeleteAh, Texas. I remember the days. Actually, the cockroaches didn't bother me too much (I did spend my childhood in a tropical country and got very desensitized), but I couldn't stand the fire ants. When we used to live in the Philippines, we'd put fly paper out to catch the cockroaches (and mice and other critters). It seems like there should be some kind of non-toxic roach trap out there?
ReplyDeleteThat's horrifying! I hope some of the solutions other suggested will keep the roaches under control so you don't have to resort to chemicals in the house. I'm sure glad that the only critters we usually see in our house are ladybugs!
ReplyDeleteWhen I lived in South Carolina, I made a trail of boric acid outside all the doors. It looked like baby powder, but it really worked!
ReplyDeleteAHHHHH YUCK! We had those at one place we lived and all I could think about was getting the eff out of there LOL! Ugh, sorry you have to deal with that!
ReplyDeleteOh yes---that happened to me in Philly but it was on my leg instead of on my head. Screamed like a banshee. Hate hate hate roaches. Ugh
ReplyDeleteOh boy that sucks. Haha great story though :) Maybe the bug guy has some suggestions on pregnancy/child safe options. Im sure he is asked that on a regular basis. My dad has lived in tx for over 25 years now and I've visited him often. I've seen one of those monster roaches once, right near my head actually, on a paper towel roll, but it was only that once. I hope it doesn't happen to you ever again!
ReplyDeleteWhen we lived in Houston the things would fly around like baby teradactyles at night, you could hear their wings buzzing. Sorry you went through that-it definitely would have freaked me the eff out.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, roaches are a problem for me too. They go invisible during winters, but this is the prime time for them to come out and stalk.
ReplyDeleteI am anti-sprays myself. They are very toxic.
OMG! I live in Texas..i feel your pain. Currently i am battling ants and some Jurassic park mosqutoes that wont rest until they see me dead. :o/ Still i cannot imagine your horror. I don't think you should feel bad about spraying for bugs. Seriously. Because I don't think you can imagine your unrest if at any point you saw a cockroach crawling on or around your child. I think your husbands idea of just spraying outside is a perfect compromise and one that you won't regret.
ReplyDeleteEwww, that's one thing I don't miss about living in Texas - the giant bugs. Everything's bigger in Texas.... :)
ReplyDeleteUgh, Alex! This happened to my husband last year, and he was totally freaked out. We sprayed the flat a few days later, but just before going on holidays so that the fumes shouldn't hurt us. Is there some consumer organization you could check with? Or your doctor? Must be a common issue in the area... I love the gecko idea, actually, but perhaps a hotel room for a night or two, and lots of ventilation, can help too?
ReplyDeleteWhen I was 16 I was staying with my mom in her "apartment" that had no a/c (very fun in the northeast with all that humidity). We had to sleep with the windows open to be able to breath at all. I woke up in the middle of the night one night and I couldn't see out of my right eye. It took me about 2.5 seconds to realize that I had a nasty, disgusting, huge black water bug on my eye! I could feel its little prickly feet on my skin. I screamed and smacked at my face and jumped up and down and ran into my mom's room and got in bed with her. I was horrified...it had an odor to it that I couldn't shake for days. Ugh, just thinking about it now gives me the creeps. I'm so sorry about your roach. I hate them too and anything that crawls on me at any time pretty much.
ReplyDeleteI think there is definitely good cause for checking to see if there is a safer alternative to the inside spraying. A bug crawling on you is one thing but what about when the baby comes? I hope there is something you can do that is safe and efective. Ick.
I'm sorry about your experience but i have tears running down my face from reading that. The thoughts of it give me the heebie jeebies. But the way you described it is freakin' hilarious. "but there was a fucking cockroach on my head!!!" oh I needed a good laugh today.
ReplyDeleteif it makes you feel any better, we have our house treated for bugs (we live in roach country, too) and we got it treated while I was pregnant. But I did not get the nursery sprayed.
I, for one, am ABSOLUTELY HORRIFIED at your use of the word "fuck." Really. My virginal eyes are burning in their sockets.
ReplyDeleteBut I moved to hot AZ from steamy SC, so, yeah. No sympathy here.
OMG! This same thing just happened to me! It was on my stomach and I threw it in my sleep and then freaked out and had my husband turn on the light and kill it. Now I can't sleep and I feel bugs crawling all over me! Oh and it layed its egg pouch on my stomach! I'm pregnant too, maybe they're attracted to pregnant women? Orkin is coming on Monday to spray, they said its ok for pregnant women. That's not helping my sleeping problem tonight though! :(
ReplyDeleteWaking up with a 3-inch cockroach crawling on you – now that’s horrible! You absolutely shouldn’t put up with that. I see why you thought of moving out as the place was possibly magnet for infestation. But before that, have you considered intensifying the spraying of pesticide? Like make it every other month instead of every 3 months, maybe? – Alta @ Liberty Pest
ReplyDelete