"killer roaches"

Despite the lack of food scraps in our bins, they still make a great breeding ground for Taipei’s “KILLER ROACHES.” Killer roaches are not bigger than Australian ones, they just have more charisma. They live in squats, hide out, and chortle in their roachy ways about the hysteria that always accompanies their timely raids. They’re fucking anarchists, and have no regard for their neighbours.

Here in Taipei, I have borne witness to the most rampant, panic-stricken horror brought about by these diminutive shuttling creatures. Aside from Taipei’s city slickers who fear everything that is not made of plastic, it would seem the ‘Ice People’ (Canadians and Europeans) are particularly terrified of these ‘monstrous’, tropical manifestations. I am not trying to say I want to have a cockroach as a pet, just that I feel no overwhelming emotion towards them. Nonetheless, my Ice People theory doesn’t quite justify why it was an Australian who first warned me to never open the door to the kitchen balcony in the apartment. Behind, she told me, lay a hovel of breeding roaches, awaiting any opportunity to invade our territory with their vile diseases and impure ideas – Victorians mate!

After a confounding spell of share-housing, I become accustomed to my Canadian roomie’s tradition of giving a series of rapid claps and whistles at the doorway of each room before entering. This was done to ‘scare’ the roaches into hiding, so there would be no impending confrontations. The highlight round of Miss Canada versus Killer Roaches everywhere though, was brought to me live in a Ko Phangan Island beach cabin. In the early hours of a humid morning, a particularly petulant Thai roach was bent on tormenting her. It shuttled back and forth across the room, before running at her in a full-fledged muy-thai style attack; it then gloatingly crawled all over her bed, before using it as a runway to fly into her hair. During these ten minutes of terror, Miss Canada slipped into the fits of an anxiety attack, enhanced by wide-mouthed screams and hyperventilating. It was a great show, but it quickly ceased to entertain me. I was driven to genteelly release the roach into the night, thus diminishing chances of either of them suffering any long lasting, post-traumatic stress disorder.

Miss Canada’s neuroses were not outstanding though; in my apartment alone, there has been Miss Poland, Miss Switzerland, and Miss Japan. I have been crowned The Cockroach Queen - a saviour of the people, for my courteous and unfailing dedication to roach removal. The outcries always begin with an ear-splitting cry of my name, followed by sporadic screams and general hysteria – they can come at any time of day, and continue until the offender has been expelled. Miss Japan has recently taken to sleeping on the couch after being unable to apprehend one suspect intruder – a master in the art of shape-shifting - who insists on disappearing and reappearing in her room ...

As one would expect, I have a number of male competitors for roach saviour status; and I have to say, I am just ‘not man enough’ to kill a cockroach by shooting at it for ten minutes with a handheld firecracker!