The Night I Met Hainan’s Largest Cockroach

We’ve been living in Hainan for a few days now, and I suppose it was only a matter of time before tropical living introduced itself properly.

That happened tonight.

I had finished work around 2am per usual and went into the bathroom to take a shower when I discovered that I was not alone.

Sitting there in the shower was the largest cockroach I have ever seen in my life.

I’m not talking about a normal cockroach that happened to be on the large side. The body of this thing was probably three inches long. It looked less like an insect and more like something that should have required a fishing license.

I would genuinely rather have walked in on an armed burglar.

At least with the burglar I would have had some idea what to do.

Instead, I stood there staring at this prehistoric monstrosity and trying to figure out how to kill it. We’ve only just moved into the apartment, so we don’t exactly have a well-stocked arsenal of tropical insect control products yet.

Fortunately, it had made one tactical mistake.

It was in the shower.

The Shower-Head Solution

I grabbed the shower head and turned the water directly onto it.

My initial plan was extremely simple: drown the cockroach.

Apparently nobody had explained that plan to the cockroach.

I kept the stream directly on it, and it just kept going. I had to follow it around the shower and try desperately to keep it from escaping the shower! This thing had some speed!

It would struggle, move away, get blasted again, struggle some more, and somehow continue refusing to die. This went on for what felt like an absurd amount of time.

Probably three minutes passed before it finally stopped struggling.

Three minutes.

Under a continuous stream of water.

At that point this was no longer pest control. It was a battle of wills, and I had become emotionally invested in winning.

When it finally stopped moving, I kept the water on it for another couple of minutes.

Just for good measure.

There would be no miraculous recovery on my watch.

Now What Do I Do With It?

Once the immediate threat had been eliminated, I discovered another problem.

I still had to touch it.

My first idea was to wash it down the shower drain and never have to think about it again.

That didn't work.

The cockroach was too big to fit down the drain.

Which, unpleasant as that realization was, actually made me feel slightly better. If the thing couldn't fit into the drain while dead, it probably hadn't climbed up through that drain while alive.

So I moved on to Plan B.

I wrapped it in what was probably an ecologically indefensible amount of toilet paper. I wanted enough layers between my fingers and that thing that there was absolutely no possibility of feeling its body through the paper.

Then I put it in the trash.

And immediately realized that wasn't good enough either.

There was no way I was going to spend the night knowing the body of that cockroach was still somewhere inside our apartment.

So I tied up the mostly empty trash bag, carried it down twelve floors, took it outside, and deposited it in the trash.

If it somehow came back to life after that, it was going to have to find its own way home.

But Where Did It Come From?

Once I was safely back upstairs, my brain moved on to the next obvious question.

Was this one random cockroach?

Or had I just discovered the advance scout for an enormous colony living somewhere inside our apartment?

Naturally, I started imagining the worst possible scenario: hundreds of them in the walls, babies under the cabinets, an entire cockroach civilization operating beneath the shower.

We live on the 12th floor, so initially I thought that should rule out something simply wandering in from outside.

Apparently I had underestimated cockroaches.

They can climb buildings.

And because apparently ordinary climbing cockroaches weren't disturbing enough, some of the giant tropical species can also fly.

Wonderful.

Then I remembered the bathroom window.

The window itself has a screen, but there's an opening where the window handle passes through it. That opening has a small cover that can be closed.

We had left that cover open for the last several days.