We're All Brave Until We Realize The Cockroach Has Wings

There's a reason rent is dirt cheap in some places.

Let’s face it, NOBODY is a fan of cockroaches. When you spend enough time in a tropical location, you realize there’s no way to avoid them, no matter how clean you keep your house or where you happen to go drinking at night.

Cockroaches will always be there and you either learn to live cohesively with them or you’d better get the hell out of dodge…STAT!

The following scenarios all stem from the second time I lived in Jamaica. I didn’t live in a town, I chose the countryside of a southern parish called St Elizabeth, otherwise known as “the bush.”

I was renting a suite in a massive, multi-suite estate house that sat among several acres of bush. This house was so rural that the yard dogs’ favorite playmates were bullfrogs.

House-sharing is a very common and super cheap way to live on the island. It’s so cheap that I could have just called this post, “How to live in a Jamaican mansion for $200.00 a month.”

It was gigantic enough that we sometimes used somebody’s dead grandpa’s wheelchair to get around inside. No joke. I have video footage to prove it. 😁

Here’s the house and the second photo shows one of several wheelchair-worthy hallways for size reference.

My suite was on the top floor, left corner.

One of the hallways, taken from the front of the house looking toward the back.

So, what could be worse than a cockroach?

Finding one in your personal space, that’s what!

They are cunning critters and seem to live their best lives after dark when you’re least expecting it. I mean, are we ever REALLY expecting encounters with cockroaches?

In Jamaica, you probably should be.

Roaches love their social lives. They don’t just crawl around out in public…..they select targets to dive-bomb. And the dive-bombing roaches are always much bigger than household ones.

One of the funniest moments I had ever experienced in Jamaica was watching a Canadian woman pick up a bar stool in public and wildly swing it around at a flying cockroach in her vicinity.

I had taken her out to a little community bar to shoot pool one night when a flying cockroach rudely invaded her space. She didn’t care that the bartender and ten Jamaicans were watching her valiantly humiliating defending herself. She was on a mission and her weapon of choice was that bar stool!

🕷🕷

Next, we have the stealthy roaches who invade your zen moments in the privacy and comfort of your home.

One evening, I was having a very peaceful and balancing yoga session in my bedroom. On the floor, engaged in my best pigeon pose, I heard rustling from a black plastic bag in the corner of the room. It had to be the breeze rustling the bag…all five of my windows were open.

But was it the breeze, though?

Relaxing my way through the yoga routine by the faded light of my bedroom lamp, again I heard the bag rustling, a little longer this time, so I interrupted my flow to go switch on the main light.

With the room fully lit, I approached the black plastic bag and saw it moving, which was enough to send me over the edge. Cockroach wasn’t even a thought. I had convinced myself it was something much worse!

I immediately opened the door to my suite and called my landlord, Kemar to come deal with whatever it was. He came, approached the bag, and poked it with his foot. Out sauntered the BIGGEST roach I’ve ever encountered inside a house.

This was a Game of Thrones-size bug.

Luckily it didn’t scurry away to a hiding spot at warp speed like roaches usually do. My suite in that house was enormous and I never could have slept knowing this roach was hiding in one of the million places it could have hidden.

Kemar casually grabbed my flip-flop, hit it just enough to disable it (not smash it into the area rug), and removed it from my personal space. I swear, Jamaicans never flinch.

🕷🕷

Speaking of prehistoric-sized creatures, this area of Jamaica is home to dreadfully huge everything you never want to encounter. Wholesome country life seems to directly coincide with the robust size of critters.

Oddly, in the same week as the yoga-roach, one night as I sat writing in the massive great room, I sensed an eerie presence around me. The room was furnished generously enough that I could have been sitting next to thirteen ghosts of Jamaica’s past and never met them.

One section of the great room for size reference.

Slowly turning my head left in the direction of the ONLY entryway to the room, I saw a rat the size of a cat approaching the sofa, and it swiftly disappeared beneath me.

I pulled my feet up, frozen in terror and too scared to even jump off the sofa for fear of disturbing the cat-rat below.

I pep-talked myself into hurdling off the end of the sofa and running to Kemar’s suite. I knocked and called his name several times but the dude would not wake the hell up!

I was on my own, creeping back down the long hallway — the way someone about to get murdered in a horror movie creeps. It took every molecule of courage I had to rescue my laptop, run back upstairs to my suite, and shut the door.

The next morning when I told Kemar there was a rat in the house, his reply was, “Yeah, there are plenty of rats in the house”.

WTF?

Are there any morals to the story?

Cockroaches are unavoidable in the tropics.

There’s a reason rent is dirt cheap in the bush.

If you live in a 9000-square-foot house, chances are pretty damn good that YOU are invading their space, not the other way around.

And forget about Texas, everything is MUCH bigger in Jamaica. Do what you will with that information 😂

This is one of those times when I’m at a loss for a smart finish. How does one even wrap up a story about cockroaches?

I do know that MANY of you are travellers though, so I know you must have at least one critter encounter you can share in the comments below!

---

Here are a couple more ridiculous stories about life in the tropics: