La Cucaracha… not as much fun as the song leads you to believe

Well, there seems to be an epidemic here, or so we are told. Yes, Las Cucarachas (cockroaches).

Paco, our dueño (landlord) says that it is normal to have cockroaches, everyone in Spain does! But you can minimize them by sweeping every night and spraying the doorway in the kitchen with roach killer every other day. We don’t know how much we believe this “everyone in Spain has cockroaches” thing…

Since arriving in our piso, we have had about 3 to 4 cockroach sightings, and 2…massacres

There was one massacre worth documenting, and it all started with something we call “Cookie time”. It is kind of our little break in the evening, when we decide we want these delicious digestive cookies that we usually keep in the house. They are Margaux’s favorite so we usually have the white chocolate box in the kitchen.

Well, Margaux goes to fetch the cookies, but because of an earlier cockroach sighting in our cabinet (and Margaux’s hatred and fear of bugs/cockroaches), Margaux first turns on the light to survey the scene. Low and behold, she scans, and finds one, half in the cabinet!

We summon for Larry. Larry is Marguax’s friend from home in Maryland who is staying on our couch until he leaves to teach English in a small pueblita (little town) in Castilla de La Mancha (1 hour train ride from here)… I need to also mention that Larry went to my rival college… ITHACA (he is the first person I’ve meet so far who knows where Cortland is!)

Anyway, so Larry come in, and confirms that yes, we have a cockroach half in our cabinet. We have an important decision to make: Do we kill it and end up with cockroach guts in the kitchen, a gruesome mess, or do we capture it, and set it free to let it reproduce so it and it’s babies can re-infest our lovely piso?

Our decision? Kill it.

Larry gets his shoe, and gets ready to stand on a stool for the massacre, while I fetch my camera and Margaux stands a good distance away, but close enough to watch and shriek in fear. All the while, Nora is in her bedroom practicing her violin.

Here is the documentation I like to call Death of a Cockroach, because words cannot describe the scene that occurred.