Our German guests

A lone cockroach - small, dull brown - stepped out of the vent in the mixer-grinder as we unpacked our boxes from Chennai . Even as I snuffed out its life, I worried if any more were hiding in the mixie or the idli grinder I had brought along. Since I was not directly involved in kitchen activities in Chennai and since we were leaving anyway, I hadn't bothered to do another round of pest control before we handed over the house to tenants.
And I had been very happy and relieved to note during my two short vacations to the UAE that our little apartment in Sharjah had no creepy crawlies. But within a month of our domicile, I noticed a few brown cockroaches at night or early morning in the kitchen which scurried away at my appearance. Soon their numbers multiplied and they stopped running away when I came. That the kitchen was dark in the absence of artificial lighting made matters convenient for the intruders. They inspected my cutlery and crockery with abandon and rested in the kitchen cabinets and under the sink. I had no choice but to wash each utensil before using. I bought baits from the store but none fell for them. On a friend's advice I sprinkled boric acid powder on the floor but to no avail.
I surfed the net for information on my unwelcome guests and learnt that they are called German cockroaches. Back home in Kerala, I had seen only the American cockroach variety, browner and bigger, and prone to flying out of the dark recesses of the rice granary into the pale yellow light of the kitchen. They flew around like drones on a mission until grandma swished her broom and brought them down dead on the floor. I hated them as much as the huge beetles that lived on coconut trees and which rushed into our homes on rainy nights.
My fear of  Periplaneta Americana changed to a strange love in the zoology lab during my higher secondary school days. It was the easiest to dissect while frogs and earthworms gave me a tough time.
All that I knew about roaches was that they would inherit the earth in the aftermath of a nuclear war, which I felt was unfair. But now I needed to know more about this little brown variety - what they ate and how they lived, and most importantly how to exterminate them.
I learnt that they lived in nests and colonies and not in isolation, have a funny gait (walking on three legs and dragging the fourth) and do not fly, are gregarious and share food (infecting each other if it is poison), that an adult female roach in its three-month-long lifetime laid over 30 eggs, and loved flour and sugary stuff. That they even ate soaps and gels did not make matters easier. The only hope was that they could not survive without water though they could live without food for over two weeks.
Apart from sprinkling boric powder so that it would stick to their legs and eventually choke them and their accomplices, I made small balls with boric powder, milk powder, sugar and wheat flour, cleared the garbage bin every night before bed, and sanitised the kitchen tops. I threatened to add a couple of roaches in hubby's morning tea to get him to act. He called a couple of pest control agents upon my constant nagging, but left it at that. In the end, I found a person who offered,  for a modest fee, to free our house of the pests for 6 months at least. He came on a holiday and sprayed chocolate mixed gel in the kitchen and bathroom. By evening, we saw a significant fall in their numbers and many lying dead under the kitchen sink. But it didnt eradicate the pests completely since they had more interesting things to eat (the atta flour used for making rotis every night being the major culprit) in the kitchen than bitter gels.
In fact, they grew bolder and came running to the cutting board as I chopped vegetables or made rotis. They walked around in glee through spoons and ladles which meant double work for me - I had to wash each of them carefully before use.
I resigned to my fate, but nurtured a tiny hope in our impending Xmas vacation. Before we left for India, I cleared the kitchen of all food residues save for the boric powder balls and poured cleaning liquid into the toilet bowls to deprive them of water.
When we returned two weeks later, there were still a couple of roaches under the sink. I used my last weapon  - the fly swatter or my rubber slippers - to get rid of any that came my way. Miraculously, I did not see any more and we have been living in relative peace for the past 7 months. If at all any creep past our door, there's the boric powder to stop them at the door itself. Good riddance, Blatella germanica. Touchwood!