I am not a fan of critters, especially ones that lurk in the night, creep around, steal from you, and take so much to kill that they could survive the next Armageddon. Cockroaches, they gross me out, to the point of not even wanting to approach one to squish him to death. I don’t want to go anywhere near that thing. So the thought that we have some on our boat makes my skin crawl. And it’s not only that they are gross, but they are like a dirty little secret. “Hello, our boat name is Necesse, and we have cockroaches”. Everyone thinks they are disgusting, not just me, and no one wants to admit, to themselves or others, that they may have these pests aboard.
   For the past month or so we have been hearing random squeakings in the night. I was willfully blaming it on bats, or birds, or bugs outside, even though deep inside I assumed that they were our icky little enemies. There was also another piece of evidence that we could have co-inhibitors, small droppings in one corner that we could not identify. The reason we couldn’t identify them was because they are minute, little black specks, and the only other time we have had cockroaches was when we left our boat for eight months. When we returned there were creatures the size of small mice that had taken over our home. So these little droppings were nothing like the previous droppings that we had found. Still I did not want to believe that the bugs were back.
   I keep our boat as clean as I possibly can, without going insane, given that we live with two little ones and a husband that is constantly in project-mode. Although I spend a good portion of my day tidying it does happen that there is a raisin found here or there and as soon as I spot it it is quickly thrown into the garbage in fear that a critter might find it to be an inviting snack. 
   Last night Eben got confirmation of our uninvited guests. Our first sighting. He turned the light on to put the ipad away, and there it was scurrying off into a dark corner of the bookshelf. It was long and skinny and smaller than our last crew. He told me the disappointing news this morning, we have Dominican cockroaches aboard. Yuck. My first thought, lets bug bomb, right now. But first Eben suggested I go into town and talk with the locals, see what types of killing agents they have available here, ones that I don’t have to worry about little baby hands getting into.
   We spoke with the man who takes care of the boats in the harbour and he directed us to the local vet shop in town. Once there we explained our situation and they had just the product for us. One of those highly toxic products that you must be fully covered to spray and is not sold in the states or Canada. The bottle says “Peligroso” all over it. This should hopefully do the trick. The nice part, you spray it in corners, in bilges, dark areas where those critters live and breed, and ten minutes later it has dried and is no longer toxic to humans. We are not about to test that statement and will be spraying where baby hands cannot reach. But I cannot wait for this industrial insecticide to be applied and take action. Bye bye roaches, hopefully.

The solution to our problem, hopefully.