Brought to you by Mortein Rapid Kill.
Does that picture make you squirm? Quit it. It’s not real. Hubby did that to me to freak me out. He waited for days for me to eat cheese just so he could witness me FREAKING OUT. Husband of the year, right?
I want to take you back a little bit. I was mortified when this happened {and it happened more than once} but now that there’s distance since the event, I feel it’s time to tell you.
Once upon a time, I lived in Bondi. Well, technically it was Tamarama, but most readers are probably more familiar with popular Bondi. Bondi is well-known for it’s beautiful beaches, varitable array of hipsters, and for those that have lived there, the onslaught of pesky cockroaches. Oh, so many cockroaches.
On more than one occasion {oh man, I’m almost vomiting think of when this happened} I woke to a cockroach CRAWLING ACROSS MY FACE.
We didn’t live in a squalor. We were kinda tidy and clean, but still nothing would get rid of those FREAKING cockroaches. They were big {the size of a newborn baby… toe}. HUGE. Do you know what it’s like to wake to a massive cockroach on your face? First of all you dream that someone is tickling you, and then you realise it’s real and then you wake to something crawling on your face. A COCKROACH. So you whack it off, and then realise that it’s now loose in the bedroom and then you vow to NEVER EVER SLEEP AGAIN. Ever.
Hubby has always worked shift work, so there was more than one occasion when he’d arrive home at midnight, spot a cockroach and get his spray on. The man is not afraid of chemicals {no brand spray was his weapon of choice}, so I’d often wake, gasping for air as he tried to kill unsuspecting cockroaches lurking in the bedroom.
Honestly, I think it just angered them, and made them plot revenge to come and crawl across my face more often.
ARE YOU FREAKING OUT?
I’M FREAKING OUT HERE.
Thankfully, I can report that we left the cockroach issue back in Bondi and haven’t had to worry since. Mortein Rapid Kill kills those critters dead in one zap. If only we’d known. However, now days up north, we do have the odd massive spider {but I’d much rather transport those to another location if possible, just call me Bindi Irwin} and snakes {gah!} and lots and lots and lots of geckos.
While we’re on the topic of freaking out, let’s talk about what freaks me {maybe you} out too:
1. Cockroaches. I’ll never live in Bondi again, for that one reason. Oh, and for the astronimical real estate prices {and my lack of astronomical funds}.
2. Losing a kid in the supermarket. Even if they’re just hiding behind the trolley, 27.3 centimetres from where I’m standing, I have lost my mind more than once at the thought of not being to find them. ALL THE PANIC.
3. Toes. I’ve had way to many pedicures next to people with the weirdest toes in the world, that if I wasn’t in the middle of the most delicious foot massage ever I’d high-tail it outta there.
4. Finding a hair in my food. I don’t even care if it’s my own. I can not handle hair in food.
5. Nose-picking or public spitting. I know runners and bike-riders need to spit more than others {I don’t know why, but by the regularity in which I’ve seen these guys shoot stuff out of their mouths and nasal passages} but OHMYGAWD I just can not handle it. I gag and lose my will to live.
6. Momentarily losing my ATM card. Yes, Lulu has just found it and hidden it under the lounge with all the coins/socks/loom bands, but in those moments {ok, days} when I can’t find it and I’m positive that I’ve left it somewhere or had it stolen, I’ve totally imagined someone draining my account {hey dude, you’re welcome. Spend that $17.89 mindfully} and stolen my identity. It’s always fun when you’ve gone that extra mile to cancel the card too. Always so much fun.
What else makes you freak out?
I probably can’t help you with your weird and wonderful freakouts. I’ll hold your hand and try not to laugh at you. But if it’s bugs and cockroaches that are freaking you out big time, Mortein can help. Instead of the haze in which Hubby left me, you can spray once and knock ’em dead. Phew. Find out more on stopping the freak out here.
I think it’s the weather at the moment too, there seems to be a lot more around… yuck yuck…I hate cockroaches. I think it’s because they move so fast…..
Yeah, summer was the worst for cockroaches. Ugh.
Thinking I’ve lost my phone… only to discover it hiding in a corner of my seemingly bottomless pit of a handbag.
Also, my husband had a freak out last night. He claimed he was being eaten alive by mozzies and promptly went on a Mortein spraying rampage in our bedroom while I hid under the covers!
When we lived in Sydney I woke up to one crawling on my leg and another time a flying one meant I couldn’t sleep all night! HATE cockies. And losing my wallet about 5 times a month!
Spidars that catch me by surprise. It’s werid, I can handle a spidar I see and catch and take outside {or kill if I don’t want it around my babies}.But walk into a spiders web or have one a big one run across my car windscreen and I don’t know where it is and I freak out.
Egg shells in food. Makes me gag and then I wonder if the shell is in the rest of what I’m eating.
I cockroach crawled into my shoe while I was sitting at my desk yesterday and I lost my shit. So gross!
Moths! Can’t stand them. The thought of them flapping their dirty little wings on my face makes me puke. I will not sleep in a room that has a dirty moth in it. Gross.
Grossity gross. I hate the unexpectedness of them. Like, they could fly at me at any given time. I need to be prepared for that shiz.
Mice. We lived in an old Victorian flat in London and they were everywhere but they would only come out to play when I was home alone and mostly when I was on the loo. Even though I now live in Sydney, I don’t feel there is quite enough distance between me and the mice. Cockroaches are my new nemesis. I think I would actually give birth to real kittens if I awoke to find one tickling my face. You are a braver woman than I.
This is my absolute favourite thing about living in Canberra. NO COCKROACHES. They literally don’t exist here.
Growing up in Sydney I used to have nightmares about the scratchscratchscratch of tiny cockie legs scurrying around my bedroom at night. FAR OUT they make me sick. I’ve had one fly straight into my face before. It was like having a 50c piece flung in my eye. And once I saw one running around in my shower that had freaking horns. I swear. It was a mutant cockroach. THEY WILL TAKE OVER ONE DAY. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
OK, Canberra… why you have no cockroaches. Is it that Lake Burleigh Griffin?
I have only seen probably 2 here since we moved up the coast, but I’ve seen enough cane toads to make up for lost time.
I have 3 filthy, evil cockroach stories!
1) I was once having a shower and washing my hair, only to feel something unusual sliding down my body – yep, opened my eyes to see a cockroach going down the drain!
2) Same house, many moons ago, there was a water leak on a bedroom wall (which had years earlier been a kitchen), so my husband started pulling off the gyprock to investigate only to unleash a COLONY of millions of the buggers!!! I was standing on the bed squealing. It was like a horror movie. Thankfully it was the spare room, so I did not have to sleep in there. Dirty beasts had been enjoying living in the damp wall. *shudder*
3) One night I was driving and opened my air vents only to have about 10 or 15 baby cockroaches start coming out the vent! After that I drove with a can of fly spray in my car for at least a year.
I think it’s time to move house.
My friend Liz’s 2015 coastal cockroach story tops all that…. on a visit to her sister, one (large) bstd goes in her ear. A trip to hospital (while punching herself in the face) and 6 hours to extract. They ended up pouring (clean) olive oil in her ear to drown it as water makes them expand. She still swears she can feel it … crawling and scratching. [Now how sleepy do you feel]
No. No. No. No. No. Just… no.
I can not handle this. CAN YOU IMAGINE HAVING IT INSIDE YOUR EAR?
I can’t unthink those thoughts.
Poor Liz. I want to give her a medal or something for surviving that, most likely a gold plated can of bug killer.
ohh man that’s the stuff of nightmares. thank goodness I live in Melbourne where they are only around every 20 years or so… aarrggh
Cockies are the WORST! We live not far from Bondi and my husband woke up yelping one night as a cockroach had bitten him on the lip! It was that close to his mouth! ARGH
Gah. They bite?
Your poor husband. Has he slept since?
I’m not all that fearful of bugs, but eeeeucch – cockroaches really skeeze me out! I have vivid memories of my grandfather beating one to death in the tiny bathroom in India, when we visited one year. And it just didn’t die.
I get marginally freaked out when I leave my phone at home when I go out – it’s not as if I get any calls or anything. I guess it’s because we’re just all so used to being so connected.
They NEVER die when you hit them. It’s like they’re indestructible.
Well, they do say they can survive a nuclear holocaust! And I’ve seen Wall-e – there was only a robot and 1 cockroach left alive. Pixar never lies…
I can’t stand it when people crack knuckles.. once is, you know, possibly an accident but after that and I am looking for the nearest exit. Also not a big fan of whistling.. but it probably wont have me jumping out of a moving car (at least not for the first 3 minutes).
I was driving a friends car the other week and I picked her up from work in it (with my 2 kids in the back seat). We had just pulled up at the traffic lights and my 6 year old pipes up from the back seat to my friend “what’s that?” pointing to the sun visor. I had no idea what happened but somehow my friend got out of the car and into the back seat with my kids (and she’s 5 months pregnant so not as nimble as usual) before my eyes could even focus on the small (5cent piece sized) huntsman on her sun visor… thankfully there were some tissues handy and spider and tissue went out the window (sorry I never litter but this was a traffic incident waiting to happen). OMG we all laughed so hard afterwards. My kids thought it was hysterical to see a grown up loose their shit ;-p
I have literally taken to a cockroach with a can of hairspray before because it was the only aerosol I had in the house – for the record, it worked.
My biggest freak out was when I dropped my phone in the water at the beach. A phone does not recover well from salt water. We were on holidays and I had heaps of snaps on there. I was lucky enough to be able to salvage them but it was a heart in throat kind of moment.
I’m on board with you Chantelle. Cockroaches. Absolutely petrified! I squirmed reading this. I may have even vomited in my mouth a little
God, Cockroach in the ear sounds terrible. I have have goose bumps now. My story is extra gross. When I was a kid, I lived in a hostel attached to my school and they used to pack lunches for the kids, so one day I opened my tiffin box and was yakking with my friends at the same time. While I lifted my spoon to my mouth level, my peripheral vision caught some thing, it was a leg of the cockroach and the heaping spoon had an egg as well. I was so horrified!. For many years, I could not eat food, without digging through all the contents and making sure it was cockroach free.