Holy mother of God

I hate cockroaches.

I hate cockroaches.

Jaysus I can barely even get my fingers moving to type...

As soon as it starts warming up in Queensland, these filthy, repulsive, devil-bidden bugs start crawling out of the pits of hell and up our walls...

Not only that, but (for the unitiated), Queensland cockroaches @*!?%# fly...big fluttery, paper scratchy WINGS.

I hate them.

I am almost reduced to tears just typing this, but I have to get it out. We had one in our house the other morning. It was dead (well, lying on it's back by the bathroom door and giving every appearance of being lifeless) but it still managed to wrest a scream from the depths of my soul and turn my legs to jelly.

I am fairly sure I have a cockroach phobia. I have an aversion to all flying insects and most creepy crawlies but the one that reduces me to tears and hysteria like no other is this guy. They are simply gruesome - the murky brown colour, the crunchy shell, the spiky legs, the looooong waving antenna...simply the way they move around the room...and the way they FLY. Why oh why, God? Why do they have to FLY?

Just before my 5th birthday, my first brother was born. It was a hot December morning and somehow I had managed to get him out of his cot without my parents intervening and had take him into the lounge room for a nurse. I was sitting on the edge of the brown couch when I felt something on my leg. Looking down I saw a gruesome beast making it's way up my leg. All I recall after that is my dad coming out (probably in response to my screams) and letting go of my newborn brother.

On another balmy Queensland evening my extended family were out at a resort in Surfers Paradise. Having stuffed ourselves senseless at the buffet the kids and uncles were wandering through the resort pool and gardens. The moment is burned in my memory and I recall that I was wearing my puffy blue and white polka dotted "Shirley Temple" dress. I felt something at my throat. It felt like a scratchy leaf. I reached a hand up to flick it away and instead my hand closed around a flubbering fluttery bloody giant of a cockroach. I screamed, of course.

As her four children started to get older my Mum decided to enclose a section of verandah to create an extra bedroom. It was properly constructed (walls, not curtains) but for some reason the bugs simply refused to relinquish what had previously been open air verandah. On a number of occasions I woke up with something crawling on me. Flicking on the fluro would reveal the hideous brown nighttime visitor. I recall one night that I woke up to a sound and when I switched on the light discovered a cockroach was not even ON me yet - I'd become so paranoid that I could hear the tiny scritch scratch of their spiky feet on the wall.

Since then I've had various other close encounters but I believe these were the ones to really concrete the phobia into my psyche. Whilst at uni I used to phone my old flatmate (Kim) to come over to my new place to remove cockroaches. She'd grown up in PNG so was braver than I - I who would be reduced to a shaking, clammy, sweating mess at the mere THOUGHT that I might have glanced one out of the corner of my eye...

Oh, I had another episode when I lived in one of the last dodgy little duplexes in Mermaid Beach (off Hedges Ave aka Millionaires Row). The screen door had been taken away and the Giant Winged Variety used to make their way in and get comfy. The night before I was due to start work in my first ever REAL teaching job, one flew into my room as I sat up preparing. Now, technically these beasts are not supposed to like the light but this fella was quite keen. I phoned my Mum (she was 2 hours away, it was midnight and NO she would not be coming to kill it) and in the end had to resort to sleeping in the 2nd bedroom (this was before I had a flatmate) which had only an old stinking, double ensemble left over from the previous tenant and a newspaper in it. I squashed the newspaper into every crack and crevice, laid some out on the bed, curled up on top and had a fitful sleep. I was also late to my first day at work.

My fear of the beasts is all consuming. I lose all sense of reason and rationality. From about mid-thigh down I lose feeling. I taste vomit. My hands shake and my palms sweat. There have only been a few (VERY few) rare occasions on which I have not had this physical reaction to a roach sighting and nearly all of those involved me having something to drink first. Last summer one flew in and I ran straight out the door, leaving my 2 year old to defend herself. I could not bring myself to go back into the house.

In Scotland I discovered something magical (and indeed, this may be the primary reason for my enduring love for the bonnie northern land). THERE ARE NO COCKROACHES IN SCOTLAND!!! Okay, so maybe there are some of the pale wee German variety, but those I can handle. It's the big brown winged beasts that send shivers down my spine.

It took about 6 months over there but I finally freed myself from the compulsive habit of entering a room/switching on a light and automatically checking the ceiling, cornice, every corner, edging and floor before entering. I didn't have to throw back my covers before hopping into bed. I could leave my window open WITHOUT A SCREEN!

And now I'm thinking about going back to Scotland via Asia and Europe. I had spoken to a friend who spent time in various places in Asia and she reckoned the roaches weren't that bad, and on this I have put my trust throughout the TESOL journey. Until my Mum started laughing at me yesterday, thinking about me taking on the roaches of Asia. So I sat down and googled, and sure enough, Mum is right. Not only do they have filthy flying bat-like roaches, they even have the German ones. They fly in, they come out of drains...they are in restaurants, in garbage...

My worse nightmare would be to survive the nuclear holocaust - and be the only human survivor...because there would be nobody to call to come kill the critters!

Beast shown is actual size - AAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!