Monday, 19 January 2004 | The exchange

I picked up a lost phone sitting face-up in the snow, dusted off the flakes it had collected, and stuck it in my bag until I'd heard from whomever it belonged to. As it turned out, I knew the owner's roommate. Odd.

Yesterday the owner (Jena) and her roommate (Lacey) came by my apartment to retrieve the phone, which had a high-pitched ring and reminded me a little of a poodle. I never knew whether I should answer it, whether I should make it stop barking.

A cockroach the size of a rat scurried across my kitchen floor just before they arrived. When I opened the door for them, I immediately briefed them on the situation; I figured there was no way for me to act "normal" with a missing rat-roach in my apartment.

"Wow, that's a big one," Jena said, upon review. "I'll kill it for you for keeping my phone." She said it with confidence, and I was immediately impressed, immediately glad I'd picked up her phone.

It was the first time either of them had been in my place, and rather than getting any sort of tour, they instead were crouching on the floor with a flashlight, peering underneath my refrigerator and couch.

There have been only two other rat-roaches in my apartment since I moved in a year-and-a-half ago; one got crushed by another brave visitor, and the other took me five hours to kill. (I wasted a third of a bottle of glass cleaner on him before desperately borrowing a can of Raid from my upstairs neighbors; I spritzed him with poison until he lay completely still.)

I took Jena up on her offer.

I watched at the edge of the room, taking the role of wimp, directing Jena and Lacey at a safe distance. There he is! He just ran under the couch!

They were laughing and scrambling and screaming. Jena repeatedly beat the roach with the plastic base of the broom, after which the roach would skip away, undamaged. After more broom whacks and the dislocation of the couch, Lacey somehow maneuvered the roach into the dustpan, held it down with a miniature broom, and sped off toward the toilet.

My bathroom is small, with standing room for one person only. Lacey ran in the bathroom while securing the roach with two hands, and discovered that the toilet seat was down. In order to deliver the roach to the bowl, she had to leave the room again and communicate the problem to Jena while keeping the still-alive roach in place. The process was an awkward dance full of yelled commands and exaggerated movements.

Success! I felt like my team had just won.

After Jena and Lacey—still out of breath—put down their weapons, I properly introduced myself to Jena, on what felt like the wrong side of a rather intimate moment. "Nice to meet you... So, yeah, this is my apartment..."