It’s not weird, it’s down-right gross

            I had a run-in last night with a roach the size of Montana. I could have sworn the damn thing winked at me from my lampshade as if to say, “Try swatting me on this baby, bitch!” I sent in my best man, my brave son Taylor, who after knocking the imposter on to the floor managed to beat him into submission.

Audubon Insectarium in New Orleans offers an up-close view.

            It took four hours.            

            You know I’m kidding, but not by much. I live in South Louisiana where these suckers — called tree roaches — grow the size of dogs. OK, exaggerating again. In reality, they’re oversized, they fly and they multiply like rabbits in our humid, junglesque environment.

            And before you start judging the cleanliness of my home (Yahoo Answers will back me up!), we all have them, even those McMansion folks. I remember once walking the streets of New Orleans at night with tourists who have that romantic Tennessee Williams idea of the city in their heads. We were on Prytania, waiting to cross the street to take in a movie. Above us, flying around a streetlight, was a collection of these buggers. My tourist friends asked if they were small birds.

            In my husband’s haste pulling out of our driveway one night he knocked off our faucet and sent water everywhere. Our plumbers, who are now our best friends, raced to the rescue but the new faucet has left behind a small hole leading straight into the kitchen sink. Call it the super roach highway. It could be a pinhole and those nasty creatures would find a way in.

            So today, I will be closing the front door to the roach motel with a calking gun, then spraying everything in sight. Hopefully they won’t even check in. The only thing worst than a live roach is one dead on its back, waiting for your shoe, sending off a cracking noise that drowns out the TV.

            Now, if you’re one of those weird people who loves looking at creatures like this, the Audubon Institute in New Orleans has a fabulous Audubon Butterfly Garden and Insectarium, located in the U.S. Custom House on Canal Street, that includes a Cockroach Chat, a live cam of the museum’s miniature New Orleans kitchen crawling with you know what. I've included a nice photo above of the Insectarium, because there was no way I was going to post a cockroach to my blog! I know my readers will thank me.