Consultant Brought In

I. B. Buggin'

Like I've been saying on major social media, I have nothing against palmetto bugs. I still can't believe they can't bite whenever I pick them up. They aren't equipped with any way to injure a human. There is no way I was going to stomp on the first one of them that I saw; one that was a mature size of maybe a half dollar. An oval half dollar.
I tried to leave food for the thing, and water, in a spot close to the closet where I had seen it go. I tried vegetables, strawberries, honey and even flour.
I had a roommate once, named Dave. He was studying biology at the same community college where I was studying English and music.
He was an avid student who grew pretty potent weed in a closet that was lined with aluminum foil and had "grow lights" that he timed the on-off cycles of to, in effect, speed the seasons up for the plants so that, they would bloom in the spring, have a robust summer and then start budding up with the approach of fall, all within like 14 weeks.
Two leafs off his plants, the least noticeable two that were on his plants; dried one inch under a light bulb, a process begun 15 minutes before Letterman came on, and smoked, kind of accounted for all of my drug use, in those days. I don't think I ever went to school baked; that was an end of the night, Letterman show, and then guitar playing way to end the day.

Fast forward 36 years...

And I still remember how Dave, whose yearbook "motto" was: "Dave's been confused," as he loved Led Zepplin along with biology.
Anyways, in our apartment, there were roaches. But never an infestation. Dave would place a certain amount of food in one spot, and the roaches would apparently wander no further than from their crack in the wall to the food and then back; and I guess they would adjust their birth rate to the daily amount of food and stay a reasonable sized colony.
Dave basically argued that "You're not going to see them crawling all over the house..." I remember him saying.
And, he was right about that. Never in the bathroom or any of the bedrooms, and certainly never crawling on you if you try to watch TV in the dark, type of thing...
But, the palmetto bugs....
Carlos had them.
Carlos left here in a hurry, owing almost $7,000 in back rent. That was kind of a shame because Carlos lived pretty well on the money he wasn't remitting to the landlords. He used to send me on errands and always made sure I was well compensated.
He apparently grabbed whatever of value fit in a couple suitcases and disappeared to, Bugloosa, Louisiana, (why is "Bug"loosa apropos? read on!) if the rumors are to be believed. It's possible that he will be able to live there rent free for a few years before having to leave and then get on some other program...
After he left, his door was left unlocked by the maintenance guy's. I remember that I could kind of sense it. They had gone to each apartment to put portable A/C units in them, and I imagine they left his door unlocked because they could tell there was nobody living there.
So, one night I had run out of something and it just flashed through my mind that the door had been left unlocked. Carlos left behind a little bit of electronics.
But, it was a wealth of things like nail clippers, toothpaste, light bulbs, you name it.

The first time I went in there, I went in with a flashlight. When I opened the door to a pantry type closet, there looked to be a pile of something brown on the floor of it. As soon as the flashlight's beam fell on it, the brown pile scattered in every direction and had vanished in a second. It had been something like 2,500 palmetto bugs.

Further inspection showed that mice, most likely, had bitten through everything that had been in boxes on the shelves. Empty boxes, and a flour bag, with holes gnawed through them were all that remained. It had been a pile of flour on the floor that the bugs had been all over. Carlos just can't turn his back for a couple weeks, and all hell breaks loose in his pantry.
But there were plenty of things, like unopened jars of peanut butter and other canned goods, and the refrigerator, which had never shut off, was great for a midnight snack, I recall.

Yes, the law of attraction...

But, the concern over finding that there are even a dozen palmetto bugs in one of my closets, is definitely informed by the horror I witnessed at Carlos' place.

So, enter David Saunders, the anole...
I named him after a kid from the neighborhood I grew up in...
Mr. Saunders is going to try to reason with the palmetto bugs and maybe reach some kind of agreement on population control, and other specifics; maybe make sure they don't abuse Harold's generosity in letting them live...
A Closet Anole

It seemed like a great plan, to capture anoles and let them go in the cat supply closet. But, they were really hard to catch. You have to aim for some spot near them and hope that they will unwittingly choose to run in that direction and into your hand. If you aim straight at them, you just aren't fast enough...

There is a lesson to be learned there...
So, yeah, after almost giving up, I came in through the back door, and there was Dave, just clinging to the wall in a little cove that offered him no escape, and I was able to grab him, at which point he may have begun to play dead; but now he is in the closet...