BAD LUCK OR FILTH?

     I had an unpleasant surprise this evening. I went into my kitchen to make some microwave soup since I didn't feel like cooking. I didn't turn on the light, instead using the ambient light from my living room to guide me. When I placed the package on the counter, I thought I had seen something move around a small frying pan left on the countertop by the sink. I looked to where it had gone/blown to...and it moved again. Sure enough it was alive...and fast. Turns out it was a German cockroach. I killed it and went into my usual paranoia upon making such unfortunate discoveries.

     I've always found cockroaches offensive and not because I think they're icky but because they imply filth. Their presence is like judgement upon you.

     I immediately did the dishes, cleared the table, swept the floor, and searched the cabinets for any evidence of leavings or for a chance spying of roaches themselves. I found nothing. It made me wonder if the roach had been merely an anomaly rather than a vanguard for a much larger, heretofore unknown, infestation. I suppose it could happen. Hell, it happened before in my previous apartment when a giant winged cockroach found itself trapped in our bathtub after it came in through the bathroom window. We never had another roach after that one. It could be the same now. It's what I want to keep telling myself anyway.

     The damned thing could've hitched a ride on something I was carrying or been hiding under the door and scurried in when I had opened it briefly to come inside. I don't think I've got a bug problem because the out-of-the-way spiders I have a detente with in my living room never catch anything. It actually makes me feel bad for the spiders that their lives must necessarily end in starvation (or murder if they get a bit too bold with their choice of web placement) but then, that's nothing I intend to help them out with either.


     Then I also think that an apartment complex is only as clean as its dirtiest dwelling and as it may be, my apartment may actually be quite unworthy of infestation, but not necessarily unworthy of spillover from an apartment which is.

      Either way, I'm buying sticky traps and hoping nothing ends up on them but dust.

ADDENDUM: After more than a week I think it may be safe to declare my cockroach encounter a random one resulting either from a doorway dash or a window entry. All I've caught in all my glue traps was this little beetle:

It's small enough to fit through the holes in a screen

ADDENDUM II:  It turns out they were not mini roaches but rather phorid flies. This particular species frequents garbage and prefers running, flying only when necessary. After watching one I caught, its fly-like behavior was immediately obvious but when they catch you off-guard, their scurrying and coloration can, in my opinion at least, cause them to be confused for tiny roaches. What distinguishes them behaviorially is that they will scurry and stop whereas roaches don't stop running until they've found a dark place.
     The lesson here is to empty your garbage more often. I don't generate much trash at all so these flies actually had time to go through their larval stage and pupate. Lucky me!

They're about the size of fruit flies (but much faster) and their wings are not immediately obvious from a distance

Once it died I could get a clear picture. They have a noticeable hump when standing.