I just executed a cockroach.
The kitchen we’ve got has a cockroach infestation, but we can’t do much about it because the cupboard they’re in is locked shut and inaccessible. As I came home today, I saw one on the floor. I knew I had to kill it, but I’m not a fan of bugs or killing, so it wasn’t ideal. I used to scream (ish) and run away from wasps and daddy long legs (no exaggeration), but have improved over the last couple of years…
Anyway, I armed myself with a glass jar and a tissue, trapped it, and moved it to the sink. The plan was to cover it with the tissue and squish it. I could wash it down the sink, but it would suffer more from drowning than a quick death (I assume): washing it away was the cowards thing to do, and taking advice from House Stark (Game of Thrones) that “he who passes the judgment should swing the sword”, I knew squishing it was what I had to do.
Despite knowing I had to do it, it took me awhile to bring myself to do it. Yeah, big deal, I squished a bug – but for me it was a relatively big deal. It’s something I’ve thought about before, whether I would be able to kill something if I had to, and it turns out I can. It took me a couple of minutes, and interestingly I treated it the same way I break a jump in parkour – decide in my head that it’s the right thing to do, know that I’m going to do it eventually, then commit to it with a countdown. I squashed it once, then bashed it again to make sure it was dead (blood spurted out, so I knew I had). The mess was contained in a tissue and the sink, simple. It did make me feel sick though – not the mess, but knowing that I had killed something.
(yeah, a blog post about killing a cockroach. This is potentially a new blogging low, but it was the toughest thing I’ve done since Saturday.)