I tell you, I don't love spiders, either, but my biggest, no, HUGEST disgust is with cockroaches. I despise them. I hate them. They are despicable, they are evil, they mess with your head, and they have absolutely no purpose whatsoever on this planet.
I'd be willing to stake my reputation as a cockroach hater that they serve no purpose on any other planet either.
They are COWARDS. They come out at night and sneak into your bread box. They hide under your sink and crawl out of your bathroom drains. When you flip on the light they scatter like a bunch of drug pushers busted by police.
They don't even have the guts to look you in the eye.
Oh, they do have GUTS though. Just try stepping on one.
You'll only do it once.
After that, you'll REMOVE your shoe and hurl it at the perp with every ounce of strength you can muster.
This is my best extermination method because the crash of the impact of shoe against wall makes enough noise that you can't hear the cockroach's body squish. Or, more accurately, crunch.
Unless it's a V-E-R-Y L-A-R-G-E cockroach, in which case I usually bellow and roar while I hurl. (Hurl the shoe I mean.) A deep, gutteral, creeped-out adrenaline roar.
You NEED that much noise because killing a cockroack is to killing a spider as eating potato chips is to eating marshmallows.
But cockroaches can outrun you. So you'd better have both shoes ready. Or a whole arsenal.
And don't think bug spray can save you. I once used nearly a whole (large) can of Raid chasing down one arrogant 4-inch cockroach. All I got was a layer of oily, slippery film on my kitchen floor. The drenched roach got away.
I hope it got arthritis in its knees.
Thank goodness we're not living among them any more. But twenty-one years later, I s.t.i.l.l. r.e.m.e.m.b.e.r.
Who else's children spent their early developmental years yelling, "Roach alert! Roach alert!"
