Cockroaches

When living in Hawaii we had these friendly creatures who loved to crawl in our bathroom along the sewer pipes and scare me in the middle of the night by scurring across your feet or the floor. Sometimes I would find them in the boxes of mac and cheese, just the small ones. These I would sort out before cooking the macaroni. When my mom and dad were with us visiting we had eaten supper and mom took out the dishpan to do dishes which was kept under the sink (where there is a sewer pipe and a real dark space.). A very large type was in the dishpan and when mom got it in the light and saw it the pan and bug went flying in separate directions, so did mom. Jake, who was Micah's age went and got his flipflop and told his grandmother to not be afraid, “they won't hurt you you just wak them gramma” and he waked and waked and waked the thing until it quite moving (his slippers weren't as big as they are now). From then on we didn't eat at home anymore and Hawaii has lots of great places we never would have found if we would have eaten at home. (A Blessing!) I don't think of them as that anymore. Because we have no fridge anything we buy at the store has to be sealed and then we put it in a zip lock too before putting it in the cupboard. I scrub the cupboards and we have scrubbed the design off the plastic stuff we put on the floor the kitchen is so clean. Flour and bread or things that aren't in sealed containers and too big for a ziplck go in a large plastic container. See photo:

(Large container on bottom shelf is what perishable grains go in)

so this is our system of keeping bugs away as much as possible. I started to notice that my potatoes and onions were having hole in them. I kept them in a basket on a stool and thought I was careless when I bought them and didn't notice the areas of open holes. I also thought my friends the geckos were getting into the stuff but the women I work with said gecko's wouldn't do that. I asked at the market and no one knew. Then, I was up at 3 in the AM one morning and looked in the kitchen and saw the suckers having a feast in the potato basket. I didn't take a picture but I planned revenge. This picture of my fiber crackers is what happens to the plastic zip lock the roach shredded as he ate through and the plastic sealed wrapper inside the zip lock he ate through and then the crackers he ate.

Needed fiber worse then me

 This set me on the hunt for where else they were eating and what they eating through. As I mistakenly believed that all the things I had in bags were safe from them, wrong. They loved the powdered coconut milk encased in a foil bag, the granola bars I was hoarding for a later time, and the big thing was, we buy aseptic milk in the juice boxes by the case. They have the foil top for the straw and the roaches had eaten through 6 of the foil tops and into the cardboard and I had milk dripping out onto the shelves. We made some poisons Borax mixed with sugar and set it out and around and picked up bugs in the morning that lasted for a week and ½ then no more bugs no more holes no more spoilage or waste. Wrong! This week I found the wild rice bag chewed through so out everything comes again and we start over. More good things for them to eat from the MacAulay's. The solace I find is we don't have rats, which eat clothes and some of our friends do have. We don't have to get a cat as that is the only way to get rid of them. We also have bubonic plague in this area carried by rat fleas JOY another thing to be grateful for not having in America. Do you ever ponder how really great it is to live in AMERICA? I do, perspective changes when the country changes. But, I would still like a wash machine no matter where I live With the cupboards bare they have less to eat but they sure seem to like the blue zip lock bags, I hope they choke on them.

  Lesson learned from this experience is don't hoard...If you do God will send you a reminder of what can happen to your best laid plans of waiting to enjoy it later. Like the rich man who built a bigger barn to store his stuff and he died before he could distribute it.   This way if i it is all gone you can clearly see the blessing when he sends more in a care package... TIA love Marc