I Can Talk About It, Now

Finally, after many tears, I am ready to tell the story.

I live in a four family affair with two townhomes topped by two condominiums. My family resides in the former. Several months ago, our neighbors above moved out. These are the same folks who had an entire chest freezer of meat go rancid after said freezer crapped out and nobody noticed until I made some pointed threats about the horrific smell. But I digress...

The neighbors moved out and the condo sat unsold for months. I began to see critters in my kitchen on occasion. Yup, a real, live roach every few days. Clearly, the hoosiers upstairs had bugs and now that their food source was gone, the lousy little things decided to camp out in my kitchen. I didn't like it, but at least I knew it wasn't really my problem. Famous last words.

Fast forward a month and the damned things had fully taken over my kitchen. Primarily, the dishwasher. Every time I opened it, one or two of 'em would scamper around until I unleashed my full fury and squashed them into paste with a leg here and there. I went to Home Depot and purchased every "pest" product available. The kitchen was a NO-GO zone due to all the poison about. Unfortunately, there was very little improvement until we made a drastic decision.

After some very deep breathing and arming ourselves with towels, poison, 9mm spray, an internet print out identifying different types of roaches and their...eww..egg sacs, we dismantled the entire dishwasher. We had found the Roach Mecca. Deafening screeching ensued, as did serious bruising of the side of my fist and several accidental poisonous over-sprays.

I no longer have a functioning dishwasher. The damage caused by our Shock and Awe campaign rendered it useless and impossible to reassemble. The silver lining is that we no longer have a roach problem, either.