Ugh!!!!!!

 

I was coming home the other day when I saw one of our condominium´s employees sweeping up a load of leaves by the security gate. As I entered I glanced idly down and saw that some of the "leaves" were lying on their backs waving legs in the air!

I realised they were hoards of dead or dying cockroaches, escaping from the drains which had been doused with insecticide. Just remembering it makes my flesh creep. I don´t mind many things but I have an absolute and irrational horror of cockroaches. 

As they flee from the poison they swarm over the parking lot and into ground floor rooms, thankfully uninhabited, but I believe they sometimes invade the first floor flats. Thank goodness I live on the eighth floor - they don´t come up this high (they can´t reach the buttons in the lift lol). 

This treatment is carried out at intervals but never really gets rid of the pests. I remember once being in a communal ground floor room with a craft group when we were suddenly invaded by dozens of cockroaches during one such cleansing. They can move really fast if the poison hasn´t yet taken effect and I shot out of there like a bat out of hell!

Photo by Erik Karits at Unsplash