It has been an exciting week in the Evans household. The biggest was last night. I was getting ready for bed in the bathroom and what did I spy but … No it was not the Great Pumpkin – he is not due for a couple of days as I write this. Besides, we do not have a sincere pumpkin patch in our yard. Actually it was one of The Blonde in the house’s least favorite things. Yep, it was a Periplaneta americana or it is possible that it was a Eurycotis floridana. If I had to guess I would say the latter.
However, I am not really good at determining the difference between species of cockroaches – especially with someone screaming in my ear. With all the control measures put in by our pest company, you would not think that one could find its way safely into the house. I guess that we will have to get one of those drones to fly around the perimeter of the house and check for any movement – obviously, it would have to be a very sensitive drone. Naturally as soon as the Eurycotis floridana looked at me with its cute liquid black eyes it shot into the opening created by the sliding door which leads into the closet. (I decided that it was the floridana roach as it had a piece of a palm tree in its mouth).
I sprayed the most lethal roach killer that money can buy into the sliding door opening. Naturally, nothing happened. What did happened next was that The Blonde in the house did not get to sleep until a couple of hours later. The next morning as soon as the witching hour of 8 am (the pest company’s opening time) arrived a call was made with the result that the pest control cavalry arrived in the afternoon. I was somewhat surprised to find that they have difficulty in telling the difference between the americana & floridana roach. They had not thought about looking for pieces of palm trees, but were appreciative of the tip.
Not all was upheaval this week. For example, The Blonde and I went to the Rohan fitness center where we exercise. We have been going there for about four months, but had never run into the gentleman who checked us in on this particular day. Turns out that he was the husband of one of my department heads when I was city manager of Huntington, WV in the mid 70’s. He also had the most excellent first name of – Barry. As everyone says around here, you never do know who you will run into while living in The Villages.
Finally, there was the fact that the third Monday of every month is when the social is held in the village where we used to live. Unfortunately, for the first time in 16 plus years we completely forgot about it. Never entered our wise old heads. It was a potluck dinner, and the poor president of the group announced what various people had brought. He mentioned that The Blonde had brought a salad – even though it became immediately obvious though that we were not present. (Since he is a former most secret, high clearance CIA operative, you would have thought that he would have known. I mention hurriedly that this is not a criticism of him since former CIA agents still have retribution contacts.) I hope that all the members forgive us by the December meeting.
If we had been there, it would have been a great salad!
Barry Evans writes about Life in The Villages for Villages-News.com