La Cucaracha

I am not a friend of insects. Crawling creatures have no place under my table. And yet, in the past, I was tolerant: I accepted animals in unfamiliar places and adapted. I've even lived in or visited some cockroach-infested places abroad and took it in with amusement. Great material for campfire conversations. But now, as a mom, it feels awful. And I would prefer to exterminate all cockroaches in the world. All of them.

We are in the tropics. It doesn't matter what you're wearing (we tend to wear very little), there are delicious fruits, and the wind and sun are magnificent. However, our backpacks start to mold for no reason, our clothes are constantly damp, and there are a lot of huge creepy crawlers. The beach location where we've been for a few weeks is known for its many mosquitoes and giant cockroaches.

Even on the very first morning, in the protective darkness, I made the acquaintance of a monster of its kind. This has nothing to do with the tiny kitchen cockroach that visited us in the Swiss summer heat. These creatures are armored. They are pretty much equipped against anything that wants to destroy them: pressure, water, heat, humans. Maybe that's why they are so sluggish when they are discovered. They don't seem to mind much. At the encounter, I had a flashback from my time in Central Asia: back then, I observed that cockroaches do not instinctively run as far away from humans as possible like other animals. It seems to me that they are slightly disoriented and sometimes come dangerously close to me while fleeing (from me!). I was reminded of this because the cockroach in our hut here on the beach in Costa Rica ran straight at me. Thankfully, we have trained our youngest daughter in the past few days not to drink milk multiple times at night (not primarily because of the cockroaches, but more because of potty training), otherwise, after a few weeks, I would probably have had a heart attack. Because cockroaches come out at night, searching everywhere for delicious food scraps. We have gotten used to storing all the food in the refrigerator and gently cleaning all the countertops and the floor in the evenings.

It didn't really help: even next to our bed, far away from any food stocks, I regularly encountered our crawling roommates. The thought of them inspecting my children made me feel sick.

The nocturnal cockroaches take turns magnificently with the ants. They are active during the day here. I am familiar with ants because in Switzerland, we used to have them visit our kitchen every spring. But whenever I was pregnant or had a baby, I noticed how my hormones took over. The idea that 1000 ants would attack my baby turned into an everyday fantasy. When I only had toddlers for a year, I could deal with it more relaxed.

Over several years, I found tricks and ways to contain the influx. In the end, it was about blocking their passage through the walls because our kitchen actually was only in the corridor area for them. But the warmer the spring was, the more ants traveled through the multi-layered walls of the old building. And here in the tropics, it is one thing above all - very warm. While in the garden, large leaf-cutter ants carry even larger pieces of leaves through the grass, we are visited by very, very small ants in the kitchen. And they are really impressively efficient: as soon as a grain of rice is left next to the stove, a highway forms within minutes. Very commendable - but not in our four walls!

A few days ago, we changed accommodations. From a hut to a granny flat. For our travel conditions and for local conditions, it is very fancy and well done. But the flat hasn't been used for years, and the landlords quickly removed their stuff that they had stored there and prepared everything. Apparently, this also included spraying insecticide because when we arrived, we were greeted by several dead cockroaches. They were just twitching on the floor. By now, there is a cockroach cemetery in the garden.

But that wasn't all because since then, we have continued to have visits from the huge armored creatures every night. Apparently, they have been going in and out for years, and now they are more curious than deterred that we are here. The poison still worked on the first morning, and giant insects disappeared into the toilet. I woke up in the morning when a baby cockroach crawled over my arm. It was really gross. The owners felt really sorry, and they also revealed to us that you only need to spray the corners and baseboards of the room because those are the cockroaches' paths to the door. So we quickly took the children's toys out of the corner!

In addition, we are also visited by a rodent that leaves its droppings on the countertops and the floor. It got better day by day. And yet, I was glad when we could switch to the neighboring apartment after a week, which became available. It had been occupied by a couple with a cat, and behold, the cat left its impression: at least no mice and fewer cockroaches.

We have no choice but to keep everything clean and accept the rest. Even now, a shiver still runs down my back, but I know myself: over time, it will become completely normal and eventually, I will be able to laugh about it. By the campfire.