by Matthew J.X. Malady
A few weeks ago, after enjoying a lovely dinner on the first night of our Hawaiian vacation, my wife and I returned to the restaurant parking lot and opened the doors of our rental car. The light inside the vehicle turned on, and less than a second later, my wife started screaming. Loudly, at a super high pitch. She also appeared to be swinging her arms and hopping a bit. I looked down at the passenger seat. Roaches were running wild inside the car. A bunch of roaches. Four of them were crawling on the side of her seat; two were on the door near the window; at least a few had taken up residence on the dashboard; and some skittered around on the floor. My wife tried to stomp on the ones scurrying under the floor mats, but they were too fast for her. She kept screaming — until she realized that she hadn’t killed a single bug, then started crying.
My wife grew up in the Bronx with lots of roaches around. When she was a toddler, her mom used to separate cotton balls into smaller portions and place them in her tiny ears at night before bedtime so the roaches wouldn’t crawl in and eat her brains, or whatever else roaches do inside of kids’ ears. Seeing or being creeped on by roaches never got any easier for her as she got older, and they are still the stuff of her nightmares — like BOB from Twin Peaks, but multiply that feeling by infinity. “I’m not getting in that car,” she told me in between sobs. “I’m just not. I can’t.”
We didn’t have access to another car, and we were about ten miles from our hotel. I had no great suggestions for how to proceed. The best I could do was propose that she drive back — at least she wouldn’t have to be the one sitting in the passenger side where we saw all the bugs — and that I’d return the car to Enterprise early the next morning. So she drove us to the hotel with all the lights on inside the car in an attempt to keep the roaches hidden. Neither of us slept very well that night; we both expressed worry about the sanctity of our suitcases, which we had tossed on the backseat of the car the day before without a care in the world. I envisioned this fiasco resulting in a caravan of colonizing roaches being transported back to Berkeley in our backpacks and carry-on items so as to upend for all time our heretofore gloriously roach-free California experience.
In 2014, my wife and I had packed up and moved to Northern California from New York City. Before then, we had been accustomed to storing coffee mugs upside down and ziplock bagging cereal — the sorts of things almost everyone living in non-luxury apartments do in order to keep the roaches at bay — hard lessons I learned after moving to Manhattan from Ann Arbor. Once, I grabbed my sneakers from the floor, threw them on, and headed out for a run. As I began stretching on the sidewalk in front of my building, I felt some weird tapping on the sole of my foot. I removed my right shoe, turned it upside down, and watched a big, fat, two-inch roach fall to the concrete. It scurried away all pissed off, and I hadn’t kept my shoes on the floor since.
But we hadn’t seen a roach for more than a year, so we simply stopped thinking about them.
The next morning, I got up and drove the mobile roach motel to the Enterprise location at the airport, forty-five minutes away. When I pulled in and dropped off the vehicle, the lady telling you where to park on the lot asked why I was returning it. “This car has roaches in it,” I said. She nodded, and I proceeded. The guy working at the Enterprise counter was friendly enough, but he struggled a bit with what to say when I told him about the bugs. “If it’s any consolation, I hate roaches,” he told me. “Twenty-six-year-old man, and I’m still afraid of those things. When there’s one in the bathtub, I have to call someone in to kill it for me.”
It was no consolation. But when I told him that our next car needed to be cleaner and less likely to be overrun by vermin — that this couldn’t happen again — he did give me the newest car on the lot as a replacement. I was grateful, I guess, but his upgrade mostly got me thinking about whether such a thing could actually happen again. And the answer, it turns out, is yes: The jnternet is teeming with posts by other people who have experienced this ridiculous problem — with the vast majority of these message board and travel website forum complaints involving car rentals in Hawaii, Florida, Georgia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and other warm-weather locales.
Lulu on Yelp (Puerto Rico rental car): “2 days into my trip, my family and I were leaving my grandmother’s house and we find a ROACH in the car. After closer inspection . . . THREE MORE!! When I began spraying roach spray, a whole bunch more. When I followed the trail and pulled the back seats down, there were HUNDREDS OF ROACHES AND THEIR EGGS at the bottom of the seats!!!”
Denise on Yelp (Florida rental car): “I had one of the most disgusting, disturbing experiences I have ever had, it was like a horror scene in a movie. So, it’s about 10pm and I’m getting into the car and I realize something crawling on the passengers seat I turn the light on and I am surrounded by about 100 roaches! Obviously I freak out and just kind of go crazy for a few minutes. . . . You guys have been warned, don’t rent from Enterprise!”
Clint1583 on TripAdvisor (Hawaii rental car): “We’ve had cockroach problems many times and with different rental companies. . . . The rental companies are familiar with this problem but it’s hard to control. I think most of the rental cars have them but many of us don’t notice them because they only come out at night. It’s not until you feel them on your bare feet while wearing flip-flops that you know they’re there.”
Sasky on Virgin Islands On Line (St. John rental car): “When we drive our rental car at night, there are roaches. It’s not like they’re everywhere . . . but we’ve killed them on doors, on seats, on the dash, ceiling, etc. . . . I am not a huge bug-o-phobe, but it’s creeping me out!”
Ashley on Yelp (Puerto Rico rental car): “Ugh, I’m sitting in the car I rented with my family after trying to kill roaches (yes roaches!!) that apparently live in here. Absolutely disgusting.”
dada1 on TripAdvisor (Hawaii rental car): “One time on the [Big Island] our car was infested. They were living under the dash by the hundreds. . . . It’s the first thing we look for now. Bring a small flashlight.”
Casandra on Yelp (Florida rental car): “We are locals and they rented a ROACH INFESTED CAR to my daughter! This is the most horrible experience EVER!!!. . . . I bought some dinner went to an event came out roaches were everywhere!!! On the dashboard!! . . . . So they rented us a roach infested car from GEORGIA!!!”
MPJ on TripAdvisor (Hawaii rental car): “On the night of our anniversary, we’re all dressed up for a fancy, romantic meal, and the second the dome light in the car turned on, about 20 roaches scuttled up under the dash. I was HORRIFIED.”
According to Jules Silverman, the Charles G. Wright Distinguished Professor in the Department of Entomology at North Carolina State University, the type of roaches my wife and I encountered were likely taking cover inside the rental car. “These species normally live outdoors and enter buildings or vehicles in search of food or to escape harsh environmental conditions,” Silverman says. “I suspect that they would not remain in the cars continuously, especially if the cars are cleaned regularly.”
Roberto M. Pereira, an associate research scientist at the University of Florida’s Entomology and Nematology Department who has written extensively on methods of controlling roaches and other urban pests, agreed. “This probably occurs because these cars are not being cleaned as much as needed. I think it is that simple.” Roaches, he adds, are constantly seeking shelter, water, and food. “Without food, roaches would not stay in these cars, and would not survive for a very long time,” and “if they find access to a place where they can find these things they will get in and get established. In our society, we tend to eat in places we probably shouldn’t, like cars, and we leave food behind. Roaches will take advantage of that opportunity.”
So, never get into your rental car assuming that it is devoid of disgusting, sewer-dwelling bugs or what attracts them. Learn from my mistakes, and take an Uber.
Photo by Paul Long
