Living in the desert keeps many things in check. The lack of moisture forces most of the insects to flee away from my place and cluster down by the shallow Rio Grande River. Living in the city keeps the wild animals out of my backyard. There are no raccoons or skunks, just some wandering domesticated dogs and cats. One creature, however, has always found a way into my house: the cockroach.

I've had a less hate/more hate relationship with the little buggers. I have picked them up at thrown them outside allowing them to live another day. I've fogged them, sprayed them, and stepped on them. Still, they returned and in greater numbers.

Late at night, a lone roach would occasionally scuttle over some papers in my room, making just enough scratchy sounds to wake me up. At first, I tried to ignore it. If it continued for too long, on went the lights, and the hunt began. It was always just one. One little bug scratching its way across the Jungle landscape. I always grabbed those lone scavengers with one hand, dropped them in an open space, and smacked them with the shoe in my other hand.

Other times, a roach would take a bold initiative and disregard the scratchy paper order. They went straight for my head instead. I have awoke to my hair dancing, little tickling skitters across my neck or a simple forehead flop. My ears have gotten sensitive to roaches on my bed spread. I can hear the troops coming. These bold roaches always got a grab by my hand and a heave at the wall. Very few lived to tell the tale of a wall hurling.

Sometimes I cleaned up the roaches the next day, but other times, I left those dead cock carcasses right where they cashed it in as some sort of warning. Of course, future roach troops never figured out what the warning meant.

I thought this would be my relationship with cockroaches for a good deal to come. When they got out of control, I'd fog my room which affected me as much as the roaches for a few days, but nothing was really accomplished. The bugs and I just got a little dizzy and went back to the routine.

Then, almost by accident, I discovered some serious biological warfare agent. Trying to figure out how to kill ants that were starting to invade from a nearby hill, I came across something called Green Light Many Purpose Dust. It states plainly that it kills on contact, kills insects for up to 8 months (and then they come back to life?), controls ants, fleas, ticks, spiders, scorpions and other insect pests. This included cockroaches.

By sprinkling some white powder on the ant hills and near my outside doors, the ants went away quickly. Something else happened. I would wake up with roaches lying on the ground with their feet straight up. Sometimes there would be two or three. How many roaches were in my place? Suddenly, the War on Roaches took a serious turn in my favor, and I peeked to see what was in the Many Purpose Dust. Active Ingredient: Deltamethrin [(s) alpha-cyano-3-phenoxybenzy (1R,3R)-3-(2,2-dibromovinyl)]-2,2-dimethyl cyclopropanecarboxylate. I see (of course!)...this accounted for .05% of the ingredients. The rest of the 99.95% of the dust was conveniently described as Other Ingredients. Basically, I have no idea what it's made of, but it works.

The roaches still exist, but I get many less nights of scratchy paper and scuttles across my head. The Green Light Many Purpose Dust appears to do the job for the time being.

What's the point of this tale? Well, for one thing, it's a very true story, and those are becoming more and more difficult to find on the Internet. For another reason, it reminds me of The War on Terror. The final and most important reason is that this column is due, and the roaches deserve their story to be told as much all of the other news going on right now.

Chris Jungle insists he is ready for a cockroach counterattack.