Why I really need to start wearing pants in the house (besides it now being a bit too cold for that shit)

Well, my home was invaded by a palmetto bug. Cockroach on radiation. Anyway, I was at my computer when I felt a force. I slowly turned only to see one of these monstrosities clambering over a pile of laundry I had set aside for tomorrow.

My first logical reaction? To scream of course. Well, I didn't really scream like the shower scene from "Psycho," more like I squeaked/squealed. I jumped up from my seat and frantically tried to figure out how to get rid of it knowing full well these things can fucking FLY.

Why didn't I just squash it? Well, a) I'm not leaning in that close on the off chance this might crawl up my arm or nay, even JUMP INTO MY GODDAMN FACE. b) The last time I killed one of these things in the apartment, I threw a whole newspaper on it and jumped up and down, only to have a mess of legs, carapace and guts that I had to cleaned off with liberal amounts of Fantastik. c) For some weird reason, I'm always afraid to kill one of these things because I imagine that it'll be like something out of John Carpenter's "The Thing" and it'll die in like a hail of tentacles and flagellum flailing about or it's like the snake out of "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" where as soon as I crush it a torrent of smaller bugs or baby roaches come clambering out. Weird, I know.

Anyhow, my brain somehow concludes that I should use a shoebox lid to trap it. Bad news is the particular shoebox lid I chose was kinda old and flimsy. I breathed a sigh of relief as soon as I caught it under the box, only to scream/squeal again as it managed to crawl out from a corner that wasn't making full contact with the floor. And there were a couple of times where I thought I caught it but in fact I hadn't and it'd crawl back out and I'd scream/squeal again. This happened more times than I would have liked for it to.

I finally managed to trap it, and held it down with my foot as I scanned the room for something to scoop the underside with. I finally managed to use a recent drawing I wasn't too hung up on, made sure the corners were folded up and secure so it wouldn't come crawling out of one of the unsecured corners and crawl up my arm, hurriedly slipped on some flip fops, sprinted like a hunted springbok to the door, opened the door, violently shook out the bug into the hallway, and saw it land on its back in front of the neighbor's door.

At this point I was tempted to run back into the house and just lock the door behind me. But I was a little guilty that it'd decide to crawl into my neighbor's house and even more afraid that it'd crawl back into my place. I stood there for a couple of seconds contemplating the consequences, and coming to my decision I stepped on the motherfucker once with the swiftness of a Shaolin monk and hurriedly ran back into my apartment.

All this was accomplished with me clad only in my underwear and an old D.A.R.E. t-shirt. This is the second time I had to be out in the hallway only in my underwear. Thank goodness both times were when hallway traffic is at a minimum, but seriously, one of these days I'm going to find myself hurriedly running out into the hall with some other ridiculous emergency and I'll run into a neighbor while I'm unpantsed.