thoughts on “la cucaracha”

Since I was a five-year old kid in the tropics, I’ve been a certified La Cucaracha executioner. They’re presence in my territory was like Code Red and–whenever they’re around–I often felt like a naked virgin that’s completely vulnerable to their spine-tingling approaches.

It was always a bloody conflict and it’s with them that I engaged in self-defense using my leather shoes. Sometimes, when I spot a roach lying helplessly on its back, I exacted revenge by resorting to chemical torture. As if I’m possessed by the vicious soldiers of General Yamashita, I mercilessly poured bleach or Muriatic acid on the roaches’ body until it succumbs to death–while I (on the other hand) suffer headaches from the reeking fumes. (cough cough)

Experience has taught me that roaches usually emerged in groups whenever they sense the coming of rainfall after a scorching-hot day. Heaven forbid (but it seemed like it),that the roaches and I seem to have developed a mutual bond. An “arm’s race” if you will–which Biology calls Co-Evolution.

Every time I tried to kill a cockroach, it always came back with a new strategy of dodging either my Kung-Fu or my chemical weapons. It escaped the bolt of my stomping feet in the middle of an open room. It shielded itself from the things I threw by taking refuge between the corner-walls. It shooed me more than once by gliding from a high wall and flaunting those thick, scaly abdomens in front of my face. What’s more, the monsters seem to know that I’m scared of them. Whenever threatened, they would fly to my direction instead of going the distance like a peaceful white dove.

Cockroaches love me. Seriously. Whether adolescent or middle-aged, they always found ingenious ways of presenting their acquaintance. They kept on adapting themselves to any worldly devices I mustered to prevent their intrusuion. They gave me the privilege to experience an adrenalin rush of combined disgust, dismay, fright, and unprecedented laughter.

The more I ponder on how they see the world, the more I’m impressed of their cunningness.