Roachdar

A recent study showed roaches make group decisions when it comes to settling on a place to live. When faced with two options for shelter, they split into equal-sized groups, assuring enough food and shelter for everyone. As the former leaseholder of a studio apartment for which thousands of tiny votes were cast, the democratic roach approach to self-governance surprises me. 

When my exterminator said there was a "world of rats" beneath the floor of my $600 Williamsburg basement studio, he gassed my dream of never paying market-value rent. I was willing to make concessions for cheap rent, but a bathroom wall with a portal to the rat underworld was not one of them. So, I looked to Manhattan, where I found a $985 studio a few floors below my friend Rebeca.

In spite of tilted floors, a bathtub that quickly became cracked and moldy and ambulances screaming toward Mount Sinai, I thought I'd made it.

Then, one hot summer night, I unlocked my door and found a battlefield of belly-up insects in the entryway. In the war between the bait traps I'd recently put out and the roaches, 50 bugs lost that night. But how many had limped away?

Growing up outside Boston, our only pests were ants in the kitchen or the occasional field mouse in the garage, both remedied by a few well-placed traps. My parents, who would have liked to see me tucked away in an Upper East Side doorman building, wondered where they'd gone wrong. Their friends' kids were marrying and buying McMansions, while I turned 30 in my roach-infested walk-in closet.

I purchased my weapons of mass destruction. Convinced the roaches were entering through the garbage chute, I lined my door's edges with roach-killing gel, sprayed them with Country Fresh Raid, then sprinkled boric acid. In the six months until the end of my lease, hundreds of the insects died, stalled in their paths in my laundry basket, behind books, inside shoes, between coffee filters. I sprinkled, sprayed, gelled and set traps, but these were German cockroaches, amber-colored ones known for their hardiness. I had to assume the survivors soldiered on. 

I started to notice a distant look in my friends' eyes as I told them how roaches weren't just coming in the door, but had nested in the doorjamb. The only friend who understood was Rebeca, whose studio upstairs was home to a flock of waterbugs. Together, we spoke the language of Combat and Raid. Others avoided us.

I had Herman, my landlord, on speed-dial. "Last night I killed two roaches with my bare fists!" I told him. 

"When I was a child I was friends with a German boy who loved to kill roaches with his fists," he responded in a typical non sequitur. With some coaxing Herman sent over the exterminator, Ray. I looked forward to quality time with a man I could really relate to. I followed Ray around, pointing out the favorite hangouts and blasting him with stories of my efforts to destroy them. 

When I asked about the basement, where garbage from the chute landed and which my poorly paid super refused to clean, his eyes widened. "It's Jurassic Park down there," Ray said.

I honed my sixth sense, "roachdar." I sensed the bugs' presence everywhere, peeping from ceiling pipes, spying from atop kitchen cabinets, judging my every action. I became jittery, prone to making sharp 180-degree turns, landing in karate ready position, and yelling "Ha!" Wild-eyed, I scanned the walls, ready to hand-chop into obliteration any roach that dared wave an antenna.

Roachdar failed me late one night, after returning from a Thanksgiving with my family. I expected a showdown, but all was quiet. A half-hour later, what looked like a spider in the middle of my bathroom floor was, upon closer examination, a dead roach, an empty roach sac and 30 dead babies. I shrieked so loud the next group of roaches considering my apartment must have tiptoed back toward Apartment 2C. Knowing I'd need evidence if anyone were to believe me, I grabbed my camera and took a shot of the crime scene. When I tried to wipe the roaches up with a paper towel, half the babies sprung to life and started running. I Country Freshed the whole clan, dropped them down the garbage chute from whence they came, and went online to begin researching new apartments.

Three long months later, my lease ended. I mopped the remaining roach carcasses and boric acid powder from the floor of my empty studio and left the remains of my bug-killing arsenal in a neat arrangement for the next lucky tenant. My new one-bedroom in Park Slope is no bargain, but it's well above ground, with a new kitchen, a spotless basement and outdoor garbage pails. Most importantly, it hasn't won the roach elections. So far.