After my last newsletter about my motherline garden, I hopped a plane for Phoenix to visit my family for a couple of weeks. While there, my brother and his family helped me engage in what diplomats call “candid talks” about my parents’ long-term plans.
Readers of Buckskin Rides Again know what a sensitive subject that is, especially for my mother, who doesn’t want to let go of her possessions or her self-determination by downsizing to a retirement community.
Unbeknownst to the rest of us, she had the whole thing worked out in her head. She gestured like a flight attendant. “We’ll just run a wall down the middle of the house, keep a caregiver on our side, and rent out the other.”
The rest of us pulled our jaws off the ground and exchanged glances. This was the point at which I dusted off my old MBA spreadsheet skills and built a realistic scenario that included increasing home-health and skilled-nursing care through their nineties.
God, I hate being the family actuary. Should I run the projections through age 95? 97? 100? It feels like a cruel assignment to hand a child, but I handed it to myself and researched home health agency prices and approximate costs to modify the house with grab bars and ramps and remodel the kitchen.
At our second family meeting everyone gathered around the TV where I mirrored my PowerPoint presentation that laid out the logistical and financial realities of “dying in place.”
Conclusion: a “Life Care” community where their changing needs could be met on the same campus was the hands-down winning option, so we started making the rounds, landing on a beautiful community with every activity and amenity they would ever want to enjoy.
We almost lost Mom one night when Dad said, “Well, finally we can get rid of that Victorian sleigh.”
Mom stared into the middle distance and her pupils widened. Tears fell, then she started shaking convulsively. Luckily my sister-in-law is a nurse who recognized a panic attack in the making and took charge.
In that moment, I understood that we weren’t discussing real estate, finances, or even healthcare. We were exploring identity.
Who is my mother if not the keeper of a vast collection of mementoes from her life well lived?
A couple of days later, my dad made a similar remark about the china cabinet and curio collections. I drew my index finger across my throat and scanned the room as if it were bugged by the Soviets.
“Dad, you can’t talk like that.”
Fingers crossed that they follow through on the community we all thought would work for them. At their age, time is of the essence and it truly translates into dollars.
I came home from that and needed something stupid to think about, apparently, because that’s exactly what I got.
Before leaving home, I had the good sense to leave the ant trap in place by my big holiday cactus. You never know when a few stragglers will hatch and start repopulating a supposedly defunct colony.
I was too exhausted to check the trap for a day or two after I got home. Emotional work hits me especially hard. When I finally did check it, I noticed a few tiny carcasses around the edges of the clear plastic station.
The big surprise was a cockroach nymph munching away at the blue bait. At first I wondered if it was a queen ant, but that was wishful thinking. The little devil had wriggled through one of the trap vents.
Now, if you’re not a keeper of plants, you may not know that the occasional woodland roach comes with the territory. We informally call them palmetto bugs here in the South. Not that they’re any less loathsome—of course they are—but at least they’re not German cockroaches, the kind that infest kitchens and get condo owners quietly shunned by their neighbors.
Under normal circumstances, I’d summon Matt or Tristan to carry out the execution. Tristan, in particular, has mastered the newspaper strike in such a way that the yellow goo remains neatly contained within the exoskeleton.
This time, though, curiosity got there before disgust.
Hmmm. I wonder how long a palmetto bug can live on ant poison? Know what, you despicable creature? I think you deserve to die by your own mandibles.
Day Three
By now I’ve developed the habit of checking on it first thing in the morning, before I even get to the tea kettle. Do I even know myself any more? Why am I cruelly watching this thing eat itself to death?
Under normal circumstances, Tristan would have flattened it with a newspaper and gone back to track his stock setups before the markets open. But here I am instead, granting it a two-day extension on life itself.
This isn’t cruelty I tell myself. This is science.
Speaking of the roach assassins, I haven’t told the men in my life about this.
OMG I’m keeping a roach in secret.
Day Four
At first I thought I’d missed the denouement. Peering into the plastic trap, the roach isn’t moving. It’s just lying there but I notice a small black area under the amber-colored shell in what I imagine is its stomach.
Aha, so apparently it takes less than a week for a roach nymph to reach peak toxicity. Case closed.
I go on about my day but for some reason, I don’t throw the trap into the trash. I can’t explain it.
The experiment is over now that the roach is dead and I’m keeping it in the house. Has all this recent talk about life, death, and the role of Providence gone to work on my senses? On my cleanliness standards?
I’m harboring a dead roach!
Later that night.
I wander past the trap asking myself why it’s still there and then I notice the roach has moved.
Moved! It must have been napping on the top of the blue bait, this morning. Now it’s gone to one side, hugging the curve.
One of its antennae sticks out of the trap and I jump back.
OMG what if it is small enough to get out of the trap? What would I do then?
I’d be knowingly living with a roach.
Complicit.
And if it did escape, I’d never know if the next roach I send to its death is just another palmetto bug, or if it’s THE palmetto bug. I refuse to call it “my palmetto bug” because I have nothing but loathing for the creature.
Still.
I reach for my phone and open an AI chatbot, wondering how much longer this can possibly go on.
I should have done this days ago. Now I’m invested. Really invested.
The chatbot says: an ant bait isn’t necessarily toxic to a cockroach, even if the roach eats quite a bit of it. Then it gives me four paragraphs on why, ending with “Your little prisoner may be enjoying an all-it-can-eat buffet while ingesting only a modest amount of toxin.”
This particular chat bot is a bit of a smarty-pants. It observes: “I have to admit there’s a certain insect equivalent here: out of all the places in your home, one cockroach found the only structure specifically built to kill insects and apparently decided, ‘This seems safe.’”
Great. Now what?
I’ll think about it after a good night’s sleep.
For someone needing something stupid to think about, I was now dealing with life and death. Again.
Day Five
The black spot is no longer evident, possibly because the whole shell is darker. I wonder if it’s going to molt soon.
The chatbot informs me that if I wake up one morning and there appear to be two roaches in the trap, one of them may simply be yesterday’s suit of armor.
It then proposes a scientific name for my subject.
Blattella invicta. The unconquered roach.
This last comment repels me and I inform the chatbot that I refuse to name it.
Its response? “People do not refuse to name things they feel nothing about. That's exactly what someone says right before they become emotionally entangled.”
Day Six
The chatbot points out that my observations have gradually shifted the evidence.
Initial theory: The poison is taking a long time to kill it.
Current theory: I’ve accidentally provided room, board, and security for a juvenile outdoor roach.
Then it suggests that if the insect molts, we may have to declare that the ant station has failed as a roach trap and succeeded as a roach nursery.
At this point, I make a scientific decision.
I inform the roach: “You currently have diplomatic immunity because you’re contributing data. Escape attempts will terminate the study.”
OMG I’ve become the HOA of a roach motel issuing edicts.
Day Seven
My house cleaner arrives. Before she starts in the living room, I point to the ant trap.
“Don’t throw that away. You might not even want to look at it.”
She narrows her eyes and bends down, squinting because she’s too vain to wear readers.
“You’re not asking me to deal with this, are you?”
“No, no. I’m observing it.”
At this point I explain the entire situation. The ant trap. The roach. The chatbot. The diplomatic immunity.
Instead of questioning my sanity, she launches into a soliloquy about death and dying.
I hear about the passing of her mother. Then both grandparents.
Somewhere along the way, I realize the roach has done it again. What began as an insect problem has become a philosophical discussion.
She’s complicit now, too.
Day Eight
The roach has escaped; the study is over.
I find myself unexpectedly disappointed. Not because I wanted a pet roach.
Definitely not because I wanted it to live. But because I wanted an ending.
A molt. A tiny exoskeleton.
A dramatic collapse from insecticide poisoning.
Something.
Instead, after eight days of observation, a stay of execution, and philosophical discussions about mortality, the creature simply leaves.
No farewell.
No forwarding address.
Just an empty trap.
