Brownies

Not the chocolately dessert. I'm talking about brown-banded cockroaches, disgusting critters that started appearing in my kitchen about two months ago. These are small cockroaches. The adults are a little bit over 1cm, while the babies can be smaller than a sesame.

They're very hard to catch because of their superb alertness and agility. One slight movement of your hand is all it takes to send it darting into the nearest gap, even if you're at a considerable distance. The adult males are an even bigger problem, because they can fly. I should have played more badminton.

The infestation reached a peak in May when there were so many of them that I could easily kill more than a dozen every night. On the positive side, though, it was a perfect training for hand-eye coordination.

Worse, they had expanded to the living room. Something must be done before they invade our beds.

So we turned the whole kitchen around. We dragged out the refrigerator and sanitized the space behind it. We cleaned every surface, sprayed every gap with insecticide, and poured bleach into every drainage outlet. We also mined the place with roach baits. That quickly reduced their presence to the occasional one adult or two.

And now, not a single brownie has been seen for two straight weeks.