I'm of rather hearty stock so rodents and insects don't much bother me. I've got no quarrel with snakes or mice or spiders or rats. But my constitution has been severely tested by a true scourge of the modern world, the foul and lowly cockroach.

Growing up in California, I thought the worst vermin of the insect world were summer habitues that my dad called June bugs. The Fresno version of a June bug was a foul little beetle that unfortunately also had the ability to fly and make hissing noises. I still have a recurring nightmare about the time my brother put a dozen of them on the passenger seat of my car and I didn't realize they were there until I started driving. Yes, I abandoned the car in the middle of the street and then brained my brother senseless. But that's another story.

When I left Fresno at the age of 18, I assumed I had left behind me any insect, rodent or beast that would intimidate me. I was wrong. I moved to New York and have since been acquainted with an enemy that fosters in me an utter contempt and loathing: Cockroaches. These skeevy little bastards bring out the outright murderous predator in me.

Our first apartment in New York was a prewar rental on the Upper West Side. It had an excellent address, directly across the street from Riverside Park. As an rental-only building, it was occupied by numerous tenants who resided there for decades. In this era of rent stabilizationn, these longtime dwellers paid $1.99 a month in rent and had no plans to leave. With such limited income coming in, let's just say the owners didn't do much to keep the place up.

The laundry room of this gothic pile was in the basement and on my first wide eyed venture down there, I came into contact with cockroaches. These were not innocuous little bugs lazily ambling along; these were 2 inch long, shiny, black, feeler twittering, scuttling nasty carriers of disease. And then the real problems began. After a few weeks, I found one in our bathroom and I recall I screamed very loudly, sending it running under the sink. It got to the point that I dreaded going into the bathroom at all, because every now and then, there would be one of those little cretins lying in wait for me.

I complained to my friends about this and they laughed at me, dismissing my disdain as exaggeration. "Don't you know," they'd say, "There is nowhere in New York without cockroaches. Even Donald Trump has cockroaches. They're a fixture of this city. It doesn't matter how clean your home is, they will come in."

I couldn't bear to be helpless so I decided to wage my own personal war on them. It got to the point where I would stalk them with a stealthlike intrepidness, trap and imprison them under a piece of Tupperware and then send them to a watery grave with the flush of the toilet. My karma was shot to hell. I didn't care.

When we bought our apartment and moved uptown, I warned Fang that if I spied even one of these heinous creatures, I would be on the phone to Orkin Pest Control for an immediate exorcism. A few months later, one was sighted and within seconds, I was dialing in for salvation from the man in the red hat. After a few visits, Don Pierre, a cheerful Bahamian fellow, seems to have the problem well in hand. He still comes by with some frequency to perform routine maintenance and to collect his usual ration of an apple, a bottled water and now and again, a twenty dollar bill from a grateful, cockroach free apartment owner.