you can't really get rid of them
Once in a great while we squash a roach here in 7H. Not often, maybe a couple times a year, either I stomp it or Linda chases it down with insect spray, and even then the repulsive creature is usually slow, already dying. We have an effective pest control system here at Harbour Village.
But I remember our rented house in Neptune Beach, hearing loud rustling sounds from the kitchen in the middle of the night, tiptoeing quietly through the house and turning on the kitchen light to see hundreds, maybe thousands, of roaches scurrying back into their hiding places such that within seconds the room was completely empty of them. I'd had no idea they were there, you could have fooled me.
Living in the rectory in Apalachicola, we kept onions in their sack hanging on the back porch, until the night I opened the kitchen door, turned on the porch light, and saw the onion sack completely covered with roaches that began dropping to the floor and scurrying away in panic. In seconds they were gone.
When we moved into The Old Place in 1998, I soon realized that the house was overrun with roaches. I called a pest control service to come spray, first comprehensively and then return monthly: within short order the problem was eliminated, at least for our sixteen years there. Doubtless they returned as soon as we moved out.
Here at 7H, as I say, roaches are under control. But this is Florida, and America, and the sickening creatures are always there.
Remember how it was after 9/11? We were not an admirable people. All over America, like the filthy roaches they are, bullies crawled out of the woodwork and from under their rocks and tormented people in Muslim garb. They have done it to Jews for ages, a danger of being in the same religion as Jesus. With 9/11, we became conscious that there were Muslims among us, and they became endangered, especially easily identified women with their children.
With October 7 it has returned, but two-fold: because of the Hamas atrocities Americans who are Muslim are again being targeted; because of the Israeli response Americans who are Jews are being tormented. How to get rid of the bullies? IDK, they all claim to be Christians. That's us.
T88&c
Below (scroll down) an opinion column
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American Muslims Are in a Painful, Familiar Place
By Rozina Ali
Ms. Ali is a journalist who covers war, Islamophobia and the Middle East.
When President Biden landed in Tel Aviv days after Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre of more than 1,400 people, he told an audience of Israelis that this was not just Israel’s Sept. 11, that “it was like 15 9/11s.”
The comparison, which emerged widely and immediately, seemed apt on the surface: a brutal attack that shocked a nation and changed the course of its history. Indeed, it’s been dizzying to witness the speed at which the same patterns we saw after Sept. 11, 2001, are playing out. The mourning of a terrorist attack has been interrupted by the swift bombardment of civilian neighborhoods. American officials, pundits and companies have quickly rallied around Israel in its war on Gaza, which has rapidly intensified by the day. In the first week of the war, Israel dropped more bombs on Gaza than the United States did on Afghanistan in a year. Civilian casualties in Gaza have climbed exponentially. And in the West Bank, recent images of Palestinians being tied, blindfolded, stripped and allegedly subjected to attempted sexual assault by Israeli soldiers and settlers recall Abu Ghraib.
In the United States, it’s as if the country has turned back the clock two decades, but not in the way that Mr. Biden suggests. For those who experienced waves of harassment and government surveillance in the years after Sept. 11, the president’s pledge of “unwavering” support for Israel set off alarm bells. I’ve been speaking with lawyers, community groups and advocacy organizations that worked closely with Muslims after September 2001 about what they’re seeing. Not since that time — not even after the election of Donald Trump, who signed an executive order banning visitors from seven Muslim-majority countries within days of taking office — have I heard so many Muslim and Arab community members say they feel isolated. After living through and reckoning with the devastating aftermath of the war on terrorism, it seems the lessons of Sept. 11 have been forgotten.