The roach

Let us begin with a picture lesson:

Here we have what I was raised to believe is a cockroach:

Almost cute in their inferiority to the penny. Like Lincoln is ready to smash them with his tiny copper* head. 

Here is the "Palmetto Bug" that Florida tries to claim isn't a giant nasty cockroach by giving it an exotic sounding name. 

We know what you are roach. We know. 

And here, is the monstrosity that is the New Zealand native cockroach. 

He appears to be wearing a suit of armour. He is. 

I know him well for several reasons.
1. I frequently find him crawling from crevices in kegs.
2. I frequently smash him and rinse his lifeless corpse in to a drain.
3. He attempted to frame me for a murder-suicide off a cliff.

It was a beautiful day, as my comrade and I drove from Picton to Nelson. We had just left a lovely Air Bnb where a talented artist and her husband gifted us so much fruit our dietary fibre would not be an issue for the duration of our travels. Adam climbed a tree:

We made many stops to appreciate the beauty of our surroundings:

We laughed, we listened to an audio book, we talked about the weird amount of fruit in the car, and just as the bliss of the day was fully setting in, the sun was in my eyes. I had sunglasses, but it was the type of sunlight which reflects off of freshly damp pavement and the light came from everywhere. I needed shade. Shade which could only be provided by a Sun visor. For reasons unbeknownst to both of us, Adam was the one who reached to put the visor down.

The following tale is a completely accurate representation and in no way a dramatisation of the unfolding events.** 

Simultaneously we heard the most maniacal laughter, smelled the ungodliest stench, and felt a terror our hearts had not yet known. As he slowly released the sun visor we beheld the vilest creature permitted to roam, nay, scurry this earth. I could hear him daring me to swerve off the cliffside, taking us both to our doom, leaving him free to scavenge the fruit and leave the scene without a trace. In a moment of clarity Adam closed the visor and held his fist there insisting I pull the car over. Despite the conflicting dialogues I was able to take us safely off the road to an embankment, and with ladylike poise I promptly threw the door open and removed myself from the roach's vicinity. The next was a harrowing scene which pains me even now to recreate for you. Adam released the beast from the visor and proceeded to punch it, and attack it with a picture frame. Wounded, but protected by his body armour the monster escaped in to the centre console of the Peugeot, to mend to his wounds and plot his counter-attack. 

45 minutes of the most uncomfortable drive you can imagine later we arrived at the local store where we purchased 3 bug bombs. As I played Soccer, Adam removed every belonging from the car and attempted to rob the creature of his sanctuary by creating a toxic environment. 

So many words, so few visuals. Here is my team practising while the sun sets behind the mountains

Still unconvinced, and unable to attain closure of his demise we chose to once again poison the air of the car in case the first attack wasn't enough. Eventually, we eased our minds and decided he was likely dead. This story has a warm-hearted ending, which I will save for another time because I can. Yay for cliff-hangers!

Forgive the slight or not-so-slight changes you may be observing on this blog layout. I have been attempting for some time to update the aesthetic nature of this site to no avail. Turns out Google hasn't updated this blogging resource, likely since they created it. My apologies. 

*please don't waste your time explaining to me that they are in fact no longer made of copper, of this I am aware, and if you weren't then now you are. You're welcome. 
**...