Okay, so everyone knows there are huge scary bugs in Texas, right? But for some reason we assumed we could avoid them by a) moving into a brand new building b) not living on the first floor and c) being deathly afraid of them and willing them not to enter our apartment. FALSE. So false.

The first encounter happened about a week after I drove down with Ali, when Peter was gone on a work trip, of course. I couldn't sleep, so I got up around 2 am and turned on a light in our bathroom. Two seconds later, something scurried along the baseboard and into the linen closet. Great. I knew enough about cockroaches from our Australian apartment nightmare to know one when I saw it, so I did what any self-respecting person would do: I ran into Ali's room, flipped on the light, and started screaming. Poor Ali assumed a relative had died or something, so she shot out of bed before she even realized I was screaming about a bug. We decided we couldn't sleep knowing it was in our apartment, so we went back to the linen closet and searched. We couldn't find it (of course), so we just Raid-ed the crap out of the closet and then shut the door and I went to Ali's room to sleep, with the kitchen and living room lights on. In the morning, we made our way back to the battle zone and wouldn't you know it...the stupid little thing was dead as a doornail on our bedroom floor. HA! Victory.

Because I am slightly insane, I had already joined an online bug identification service (only $1.99/picture upload people!), but I didn't even need to use it this time to know it was a cockroach. Luckily, it wasn't the little kind (German roach) we had in our apartment in Australia that multiply by the second and are next to impossible to get rid of, thankfully. This was the larger but less likely to infest kind (American roach), that probably wandered in from outside and isn't *hopefully* plotting a takeover of our entire apartment. We called the exterminator, who came and sprayed down our apartment, and he was extremely helpful and patient with us. I'm sure he thought we were completely insane. Anyway, he let us know that the one we found was "tiny" compared to its full-grown size, so to not be alarmed if we see one much bigger than that. Great! Luckily, we haven't seen one since. I know more about the various cockroach species than I ever wanted to, that's for sure.

That bring us to our second, somehow more traumatic encounter. What is more traumatic than a cockroach, you ask? Read on!

Ali got home from work the other day to discover a dead (thank you, exterminator!) scorpion on her bathroom floor. Now, our friend the exterminator assured us it was highly unlikely we would get any scorpions INSIDE our apartment, so we weren't exactly prepared for this one. It was much, much smaller than I imagined, but still pretty terrifying. So, we've requested the exterminator again this Friday and we'll see if he can work his magic. We did notify the leasing office and they seemed to indicate that scorpions weren't a huge issue in our area, and it was a bit unusual we had one in our unit. I think they thought we were just hyper Northerners who had found a large ant or something and freaked out, so they wanted me to send them a photo to confirm that it was indeed a scorpion. I'm convinced these creatures seek us out because they know we are absolutely terrified.


Avert your eyes if you don't want to see a picture of our little friend...



I'm predicting a tarantula sighting next week. SEND HELP!!!