Alexander Kobulnicky

Like most apartments in New York City, this one has roaches. Cockroaches are a pest, but as infestations go, they’re pretty mild. Even Wikipedia has a hard time coming up with reasons that cockroaches are uniquely horrible. (The most hard-hitting charge they can present is that they sometimes carry pathogenic microbes “particularly in environments such as hospitals,” a small worry to those of us who don’t reside in hospitals.) With their waggly antennae and fuzzy legs, they’re self-evidently disgusting but still, better roaches than bedbugs or mice or termites. I’m not afraid to say it: I can live with cockroaches.

Still, even my patience has limits, and when the bugs get too bold, and no longer scatter when the light comes on, it’s time to kill some pour encourager les autres. Cockroaches are slow and easy to smash if you surprise them in the open, but their chitinous exteriors conceal a surprisingly gooey center, and if you catch them a glancing blow,  their front parts try pathetically to drag a shattered abdomen to safety. I’ve tried cutting them in half with a paring knife, but it doesn’t really slow them down — like an engine severed from the rest of the train, their front legs scurry away all the faster. You can scald them, sic the cat on them, or shoot them with Windex, but Rasputin-like, they remain alive.

The best alternative is poision, pyrethroids that comes in a spray can and are so loaded with artificial lemon scent that the actual pyrethroid odor is only a dimly palpable funk. Like most insecticides, it’s a neurotoxin, and the instructions are to spray it around the baseboard and behind appliances. . . and wait. A few minutes later, cockroaches come rushing out in obvious agony. As their brain functions shut down, their gait becomes unsteady, they start walking in circles, limp and gyrate, and then lie down and twitch until they expire. They come out in a steady stream for the next several hours, looking for safety and dying disgustingly all over the floor. And this is the best way to kill cockroaches.

With options like these, the fight against cockroaches, practically unwinnable, starts to feel like a real war. It’s no mistake that the top-selling brand of insecticide is called “Raid”. There is no insecticide called “Sustained Campaign,”  “Conquest,” or “Clear and Hold.” Raids are the only kind of military action that is possible against cockroaches. You can attack behind the sink, kill the women and children, poison their turf, and retreat victorious, but the cockroaches still control the baseboards and you haven’t seriously damaged their ability to regroup.  Even crueler, killing these basically harmless animals in droves starts to feel like a war crime after a while. Watching a column of poisoned roaches stagger out of the darkness, waving the roachy equivalent of a white flag, and then finishing them off with a final squirt of pyrethroids is no less an atrocity than murdering the prisoners of Agincourt or the Alamo. You may think that extermination is all glory, but, boys, it is all hell.